The last couple of months have been pretty busy so the
challenges (and the blog) have had to take a bit of a back seat for a while.
However, I now have just over a month to try and finish as many of them off as
I can and it’s time to crack on. Looking at my overall progress for the year right now
things are not looking great for getting a full set by new years eve – but I
guess I just have to crack on and see what can be done.
Over the year I have been building up my baking skills (I would
have like to have written “honing my baking skills” there but that may be overegging
things a touch). This weekend it was time to complete challenge No 10 - Host a
tea party where I have booked all the food. Thankfully we’re going with the
conventional understanding of the term tea party “a formal, ritualised
gathering for the small meal of afternoon tea” – rather than hosting the militant
wing of the Grand Old Party.
The first snag was the venue – lack of space, chairs (and at
the moment heating – my boiler is broken) ruled out my flat for the location.
Thankfully Rosie and Mark kindly agreed to let me “host” the event at their
house (they have a proper tea pot and table cloths too!!). The next was the
timing – a tea party should be for afternoon tea but the only suitable time was
10:30am – so for the duration of the tea party Rosie and mark’s living room
became the sovereign territory of Bhutan and the start time therefore technically
4:30pm – perfectly inside the afternoon tea zone.
Next thing to sort was what to bake – a little reading around
suggested that cake, scones, biscuits and small sandwiches are all acceptable
afternoon tea fare so foolishly I decided to make all of them. I started the
baking on Friday evening by making a couple of Ciabatta loaves, cheese scones
and shortbread. All went fine until I melted part of the cooker hood – but am
sure I will be able to find a replacement part for that. Then on Saturday I made
a Victoria sponge cake (my first proper sandwich cake) and returned to an old
favourite in lemon drizzle cake, slightly modified to include apples from my
parent’s and Penny’s gardens. Spreading the butter icing on the sponge cake was
trickier than I expected but by 9:30 on Saturday evening all was prepared (and
my kitchen looked like a bomb site).
The tea party itself went very well, attended as it was by
Rosie, Mark, Astrid, Oscar, Penny, Luke and Archie- thanks for all turning out guys :-). Mark and Rosie let me use
some of their v nice china crockery and helped set everything out wonderfully (sorry
the photo doesn’t do the set up justice – the light wasn’t great for photos),
Mark was even about to get the iron out for the table cloth at one point. The
baking went down well and everyone was very complimentary about what I’d made –
looks like I’ve managed to pick up baking reasonably well. More important than
how the food went down it was really great to have a get together and a natter,
not something we get to do very often.
Astrid tucking in to some Victoria sponge - Oscar wasn't quite so interested :-)
