4 down and 8 to go!

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.

 There's no way she's ever getting an invite to come round for a cuppa......

 

I'd rather have this lot!

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).

 Ciabatta

Shortbread fingers

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.

 Rosie and Penny and the afternoon tea spread

Astrid tucking in to some Victoria sponge - Oscar wasn't quite so interested :-)

 

So that’s another challenge off the list. 4 down (well 5 if you include this blog) still a way to go but we’ll see how I get on. Just because the challenge is done doesn’t mean I’m going to stop baking now – I’ve had great fun learning and it’s something I’ll keep on doing – though maybe not trying to bake so many things simultaneously!