Tea Parties Vol. 2: Spring Up Speed Up

Tea Party, volume 2. Fortunately this one did not end with my husband going to the emergency room! These are starting to look less like tea parties and more like huge-dinner-but-there's-also-tea parties. Or huge-dinner-with-tea-in-the-food parties.

For this one, I got input on the menu but ended up making almost all of the food myself. I spent most of the day before making things and then Sarah came to help and hang out that night. The party was on Sunday afternoon. Caroline and Alaina helped assemble the deviled eggs and dip the strawberries after they arrived. It ended up being a really nice day for early March so we got to take some photos outside! It was a lovely time.

If you like upbeat music, check out Perfume's song Spring of Life for the name inspiration!

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RECIPES:

• Sausage Fennel Seed Slices
• Smoky Eggy Deviled Eggs
• Carrot-Apple-Ginger Soup (Joy the Baker) - chosen because it did not contain dairy and I had a vegan friend in attendance. While she is not strict and will eat vegetarian food, it is a goal of mine to have at least a few vegan friendly recipes up my sleeve that I personally like to eat.
• Lemon Cake with Black Tea Frosting (Honey and Jam's take on Dorie Greenspan) - I made this as written and while it was a lot of work, I did enjoy the end product. I baked the cake, brewed extra-strong black tea, and candied the lemon slices the evening before the party, and made the frosting and assembled the cake the morning of the party. It made a LOT of frosting (so I filled the middle with a lot) and the top layer ended up sliding around a bit.
• Rhubarb Tart with Cardamom Meringues
• Green Tea White Chocolate Dipped Strawberries

Other things we served that were not made from scratch or that don't really need a recipe:

• White chocolate covered pretzels (I did make these but all the ingredients are already prepared; you just melt chocolate, dip the pretzels in it, and sprinkle rainbow nonpareils on before the chocolate hardens)
• Hummus and raw vegetables
• Various fancy cheeses
• Gin and tonic with a splash of lavender liqueur
• Wine
• Dry sparkling mead (our local meadery makes a rosé grape and lavender one called Equinox that is tasty!)