During my time in Oxford, afternoon tea was a regular fixture. It had to be at The Rose, a delightful cafe with proper leaf tea, homemade scones and plenty of clotted cream. We often went for lunch, they do outrageous club sandwiches, and squeezed in a scone or two afterwards.

These days, we rarely go out for dinner. Especially since January, in an attempt to reign in the spending, we’ve responded to most invitations to go out for drinks with an invitation to have dinner at ours instead. To mix things up a little, we’ve had pizza nights (utilising the new pizza stone) and Scrabble nights (utilising the new games selection) and this weekend I did afternoon tea.

I’m lucky to have excellent bakers for friends, so with a little division of labour, we managed to put on an excellent spread without spending hours in the kitchen. There’s something so relaxing about a proper afternoon tea, starting sometime in the early afternoon and meandering on until the evening. A tiny triangle of egg mayonnaise sandwich here, a slice of cake there…

The following was the menu on offer at our afternoon tea and by no means exhaustive…

• Fizzy cocktails – just because
• Higgins afternoon blend leaf tea – no PG Tips, please
• Egg mayonnaise sandwiches on homemade sourdough – with a little chopped gherkin and capers thrown into the mix
• Smoked salmon and cream cheese sandwiches
• Lavender cake
• Homemade scones, clotted cream and jam – the scones need to be still warm from the oven. We used the recipes from How to be a Domestic Goddess
• Lemon creams (inspired by Rachael)
• Pistachio macaroons – gooey nutty perfection, from How to be a Domestic Goddess

Tags: sandwich, Sweet things

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