Someone was a Clean Plate Doobie in that last picture! Signs of a very successful tea. Congrats! Everything looks wonderful!
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LUCKY 30. Everything looks beautiful .
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We’re home and the dishes are mostly done; Mom takes care of that. I do have 10,000 things to put away though:)
I’ll write a full report later, but overall I’m pretty happy. I made many improvements over last year, in terms of menu selections, testing, prep/logistics, and event execution.
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Congratulations, and thanks for taking us along for the ride. It was exciting!
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Awesome! You are the bestest and those ladies look so satisfied! 
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Such an attractive presentation! Lucky guests! Lucky mom! Lucky you!
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Everything looked beautiful! What an absolutely lovely event!! You are indeed a superhero as mentioned upthread. Great job! Hope your feet are up!
PS - thanks for providing the entire documentary, super entertaining.
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Amazing!! Everything looks delicious, and the presentation is lovely.
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The Millionaire’s Shortbread layers are so defined – beautiful! I’m fighting with a new computer dropping the internet connection every frigging time it feels like it, but I’ve been following The Tea. Somebody really has to invent a product that insures bundt release success – form fitting parchment paper or something. (the crystal almond!)
I love the tulips, both on the tablecloth and the real ones.
I may have missed it, were you responsible for beverages too?
Anyway, this is inspiration aplenty and thank you for showing/sharing.
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Thank you. I was pleased with the shortbread. Not a bad result considering I just ran one test - but I think the recipe can take most of the credit. I’ll list it in my wrap-up post.
About bundt release - I have 99.99 success rate with Pam Baking Spray with Flour and Baker’s Joy (although I always buy the former these days - cheaper, more widely available.) Provided I spray heavily , covering the whole surface, just before pouring in the batter, these products work for me.
I sourced the tulips from the grocery store, believe it or not.
About bev - there was only hot tea (brewed in teapots, natch) and water. I lobbied for coffee and lost 
Mom handled the tea.
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Final Menu
- King Arthur cream tea scones with dried blueberries
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Recipe adjustments: added about 1/2 tsp lemon oil (not extract) to each batch.
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Dried fruit quanity note: The recipe calls for a range of quantity for the dried fruit (between113g to 227g), but I found adding the quantity on the higher end meant a lot of “wasted” blueberries, as they fell out of the scones during baking and cooling. 150 grams was best.
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Event quantity: I made 4 batches (12x4=48) and this was too much for 30 people; there were a lot of leftovers (and the leftovers stale quickly.) Last year I made two different flavors of scone, and I think for that reason, some people ate two.
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Butter and jam: Last year I put out homemade jam on every table, along with butter. I wound up throwing away a LOT of homemade jam, which was painful. This year, I took three homemade jars (strawberry, peach, black/red raspberry) and put them on a central table for folks to come get jam.
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Recipe adjustments: - this year I used chicken stock instead of veg stock, and used the quantity of garlic and onion called for in the recipe. I remove most of the garlic (which cooks in the soup as smashed cloves) before pureeing. Doubled the fresh ginger.
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Served with sour cream on the side; when I make this at home, I garnish with a bit of greek yogurt and pomegranate molasses or maple syrup.
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If I made it again, I would remove the garlic completely and halve the onion in the recipe
- Chicken salad on King’s Hawaiian savory butter mini-rolls (not the sweet ones)
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I poached 3 lbs of boneless, skinless chicken breasts in diluted chicken stock with slices of lemon, thyme, and peppercorns. Then I let it rest overnight in some of the water, and made the chicken salad the next day.
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To the diced chicken, I added 1.5 c mayonnaise (I meant to do half-and-half mayo and greek yogurt or sour cream, but I forgot), about 7 finely diced ribs of celery, 1.5 tsp ( I think) salt, a lot of pepper, and at least a teaspoon of celery salt. I also added an entire plastic blister pack of chives, which I snipped fine with scissors. I made this the morning of the event so it wouldn’t weep too much (it worked.)
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The sandwiches were made about an hour before service, built on damp paper towls and stored under damp paper towels.
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Used about 1.5-2 heaping TSPs of chicken salad per roll. Then I secured the sandwich with a decorative toothpick. Otherwise they kind of flopped apart. When I cut the rolls open, I left them attached at one side. In tests, I hollowed out the rolls a little to hold the chicken salad better, but I didn’t do that on the day of the event.
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All the actual chicken salad sandwiches we made were eaten! I had a LOT of chicken salad left over - could have made 30% less ;(
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Someone actually approached me to ask for the recipe!
- Turkey and Swiss sandwiches on wheat bread
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Used Pepperidge Farm thin-sliced wheat bread, choosing the 2 freshest loaves.
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Very thin slices of deli turkey and Swiss, plus one bit of lettuce and very thin swipe of mayonnaise.
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Event prep: These were made one hour before service. Onto a very large hotel sheet, I placed a layer of damp paper towels. Sandwiches were made and placed on the towels, then when finished, I placed another layer of damp towels on them and plastic wrap over that. They stayed perfectly moist.
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Did not cut off crusts; doing so promotes drying out. Sandwiches were cut in half on a diagonal.
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There were some leftovers of these, maybe 10.
- Oatmeal jam bars from Spruce Eats
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Recipe adjustments: none. Made as written.
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One and three-quarters cup of jam is a LOT. I used homemade peach jam.
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Baked these the morning of the event, because the streusel gets soggy with time. They really take a long time to cool down, and they can’t be sliced until completely cool.
- Millionaire’s shortbread from King Arthur
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Recipe adjustments: I used cheap Tollhouse chocolate chips for the chocolate layer, and would do so again if baking for a non-gourmet audience. If I were making to my taste, I’d make the chocolate darker and better-quality.
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It was so hot in the kitchen when I was making these that the shortbread was difficult to press into the pan. It was so humid the day I served these that I had to keep them refrigerated until moments before service.
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Logistical problems aside, these are delicious.
- Rose Levy Beranbaum’s Triple Lemon Velvet Bundt
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Recipe adjustments: I add about 1/2 tsp lemon oil to the cake batter.
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Made 2 days ahead (cake and syrup) and stored covered at room temp (in my basement actually.)
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Glazed the morning of the event.
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Have made this cake dozens of times; it’s a winner.
- Churro bundt cake (same recipe reprinted on Nordic Ware’s site and Bake From Scratch)
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Recipe adjustments: None.
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Technique adjustments: The first time I made this, I piled the cinnamon-sugar filling inside the batter too closely, and I got an unappealing tube of crusty filling, rather than a ribbon. The directions say not to let the filling touch the pan (lest it stick) and I took that advice a little too far. For the bake for the event, I spread it out more, and the results were picture-perfect.
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Made 2 days ahead and covered in the cinn-sugar coating one day ahead.
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This cake is a crowd-pleaser and visually very appealing. We called it a “cinnamon-sugar donut cake” because people 'round here don’t know what a churro is.
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Recipe adjustments: none. I’ve made this more than any other cake recipe.
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I didn’t glaze this, because I had two other cakes covered in sweet topping. I just sifted some powdered sugar on for effect.
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This cake was made to replace the crystal almond bundt I intended to serve, but which stuck to the pan and was unusable.
I didn’t need to make three cakes; I could’ve gotten away with two (both large size.) And in retrospect, I really wish they could’ve been a little more different; I cut a piece of each and put them on my plate to test, and they looked disappointingly similar. Either making the choc chip pistachio bundt I originally planned to serve, or some other chocolate or flavor variety, would’ve been a good idea.
We put out sandwich bags after the event and let people take little doggie bags home. Even with that, I came home with a dozen scones, a precious container of shortbread that I hadn’t even cut up and kept in the fridge at the venue, about 8 jam bars, a couple turkey sandos, and a large amount of chicken salad.
That said, I handled the pre-event coordination and baking a lot better this time. I thought about this as I was fairly calmly taking my apron off about 10 min before the doors were to open. There were some hiccups - the almond cake fail, the broken container of soup - but I was prepared and had enough slack in my schedule that I could accommodate these problems without infecting my entire system.
Thanks to everyone for the advice and encouragement. I felt a lot less alone with my “culinary friends” helping out from afar. I overheard Mom at the event talking about how I had consulted my “culinary friends” on various issues, and how helpful they were. She was talking about you
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for everyone who helped you out. My mom used to call people on the various food boards either “your food friends” or “those food people”. 
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Kudos, mig! A wonderful success, a lot of people had a happy day at the tea!! Everything looked so good!
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Just had a taste of the failed almond cake. It was so wet when I ate it the other day, but today it’s perfect. So bummed it stuck !
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What a great after-report!!! Such an amazing event, everyone must have gone home so happy and uplifted. You going to do it again next year??
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I’m bummed it stuck, too. I realized after I told you I’d never had sticking issues that I did once (and way worse than yours), but that was also the one time I made it where I used something other than a genereous coating of baking spray on the pan.
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Bravo! Next year?
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Loved reading this final report. I too wanted the chicken salad recipe and here it is! Ditto the soup, so much here is helpful, as well as fun to “watch” throughout.
Thanks so much mig 
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- To the diced chicken, I added 1.5 c mayonnaise (I meant to do half-and-half mayo and greek yogurt or sour cream, but I forgot), about 7 finely diced ribs of celery, 1.5 tsp ( I think) salt, a lot of pepper, and at least a teaspoon of celery salt. I also added an entire plastic blister pack of chives, which I snipped fine with scissors. I made this the morning of the event so it wouldn’t weep too much (it worked.)
I’m surprised you add 1.5 tsp salt plus 1 tsp celery salt to chicken salad calling for 1.5 cups of mayo?
Does it need the salt? I never have salted chicken salad before, because the mayo is already salted.
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Wellllll… OK
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