An Easter Tea

Risa over at The Par Tea Planner is hosting a first day of Spring Tea. I absolutely love nothing more than to get some girls together for tea. But, the first day of Spring this year is on the 20th and on a Thursday, and during the week is just hard for me to put things together, so this tea took place this past Saturday. I had a couple of girlfriends over and we had a wonderful time of conversation and just really enjoying girlie time with no interruptions.


I had wanted to take tons of pictures of my set table, but, halfway through and my batteries died and there were no more in the house..so, I had to recreate a few of the pictures.


So here is what was the menu:
Hot Orange Spice Tea, complete with sugar cubes and
Hot chocolate, with marshmallows (I had these left over from my CH entry, and they were still fresh!)

Iced Tea

Cucumber and Cream Cheese Sandwiches
Egg Salad Sandwiches

Buttermilk Scones with mock devonshire cream and lemon curd


Pound cake finger sandwiches
Individual Cheesecakes with chocolate sauce and strawberries
Chocolate covered strawberries
Individual Creme Brulees in egg shells

To finish off:
Peppermint patties
Ducks filled with pecans and caramel

Here are some pictures, and the recipes will follow:

Here are the buttermilk scones and pound cake finger sandwiches:

Buttermilk Scones from A Passion for Baking by Marcy Goldman

4 Cups all-purpose flour

1/2 Cup sugar

1/2 tsp salt

2 tsp baking powder

1/2 tsp baking soda

1 1/2 Cups unsalted butter, cut into chunks or shredded and frozen

1 large egg

1 1/4 Cups buttermilk

Finishing Touches:

Milk or melted butter, for brushing

Sugar, for dusting

Preheat oven to 425 degrees. Stack two baking sheets together and line top sheet with parchment paper. Arrange oven rack to upper third position.

Ina food processor bowl, add flour, sugar, salt, baking powder and baking soda and blend briefly. Add butter and pulse to make a coarse, grainy mixture. Turn out into a large bowl. Make a well in center; add egg and most of buttermilk and stir lightly with a fork to blend. Add remaining buttermilk if needed to make a soft shaggy dough.

Turn out mixture onto a lightly floured work surface and knead 8-10 times until mixture is just barely roll able. Pat or roll out to 1-inch thickness and cut into 3-inch wedges with a cookie cutter. To do this, cut a 4-inch circle and then cut it in half. This will give you nice wedges. Place wedges on prepared baking sheets. Brush tops with milk or melted butter and dust with sugar.

Bake until golden, about 12-15 minutes.

Pound Cake Finger Sandwiches:

Slice your favorite pound cake, such as this one

melted semi sweet chocolate

8 oz cream cheese, room temp

1/4 cup strawberry preserves

Slice pound cake to the thickness that you want, coat one side with chocolate. Let the chocolate cool so that it hardens.

Mix the cream cheese and preserves together and spread between 2 slices of pound cake, so that it is sandwiched. I then cut it into 3 pieces.

Next, creme brulees in egg shells:

I borrowed this recipe from Tartlette, so go check her out to get this recipe. The hardest part of this was trying to crack the egg so that you only broke the top off. But, other than that, it was fairly easy.


Here are the Chocolate dipped strawberries and mini cheesecakes:



Here are the little ducks and peppermint patties:


Bunny Napkins:


The Beverage Table:

And finally, these were the parting gifts:

These little purses were filled with peanut butter and caramel.

Wow, this was a long post...Hopefully, I didn't leave anything out. :)

Happy Easter!