Tea Parties vol. 5: Keto Easter

After a thoroughly disappointing experience with tea service at a fashion event I went to at the end of March, I decided the only way I am going to have a nice tea is if I make it myself. I was telling a friend about tea service and he told me he wished he'd gone to tea when he visited London. He was going to be cat sitting for us soon so I wanted to do something to thank him, and he wanted to get together for the Easter holiday right before our vacation so I invited him to tea at my house. I think he had a really nice time, and I got to replace a sub-par memory with a really nice one.

I made all of the food, and it was a mix of keto friendly items and regular ones since I was the only person following a keto diet. There were only three of us so things were very manageable. The cream cheese stuffed strawberries were an unexpected big hit! I will definitely make more of them for future tea parties with people who can't eat sugar.

THE MENU

Drinks 

• Yorkshire Tea
• Sparkling wine

Savory course 

• Crustless quiche using my regular recipe but omitting the crust and instead greasing the baking dish very very well with butter. It had cheese, scallions, and grape tomatoes in it.
• Charcuterie plate (sausage, cheeses, olives) with optional crackers
• Cucumber sandwiches, with and without bread. I mixed a dried herb blend from Penzey's (Justice) into some cream cheese with salt and pepper and spread it on bread and topped with cucumber slices for the regular version, and sandwiched the cream cheese between cucumber slices for the keto friendly version.

Scone course 

• English style scones with homemade strawberry jam and store bought fig jam 
• Almond flour scones (keto friendly) with sugar free raspberry jam made with home grown raspberries

Dessert course

• Sugar free Jello eggs (made as directed on the package and poured into egg shaped molds)
• Keto fudgy brownies (keto friendly) decorated with Russell Stover sugar free candy drops in cute bright colors
• Peanut butter cookies with peanut butter candies
• Strawberries stuffed with sugar free vanilla flavored cream cheese (no recipe, just mixed powdered sugar substitute and some vanilla extract into cream cheese until thoroughly combined, then smushed as much as I could into strawberries that were hulled and had a cross shaped cut in the top)
• Minneola slices 

Almond Flour Scones

After a thoroughly disappointing experience with tea service at a fashion event I went to at the end of March, I decided the only way I am going to have a nice tea is if I make it myself. I was telling a friend about tea service and he told me he wished he'd gone to tea when he visited London. He was going to be cat sitting for us soon so I wanted to do something to thank him, and he wanted to get together for the Easter holiday right before our vacation so I invited him to tea at my house. I think he had a really nice time, and I got to replace a sub-par memory with a really nice one.

For an English style tea service it is of course necessary to serve scones and clotted cream and jam, so this was the first thing I tried to find a keto friendly recipe for.

Notes:

• I used Swerve granulated sugar substitute and they got very brown, almost burnt on the bottom the first time I made them. I plan to experiment with the sweetener to hopefully get them to not brown so much in the future.
• I left out the lemon zest one time because I didn't have it and it worked fine. The vanilla is really nice. If you don't want them to have a default sweet kind of taste though you could probably leave it out. 
• I ate these with clotted cream and sugar free homemade raspberry jam.
• I've also used these as a base for strawberry shortcake and liked it! (pictured) 

Verdict: I loved these and have made them one additional time since the keto friendly tea service because I missed them when they were gone. I have a feeling this will be a go-to recipe.

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RECIPE: Grain Free English Scones (Katrin Nürnberger, Sugar Free Londoner)