Mother's Day Afternoon Tea

Like last year I thought I'd make La Mama an afternoon tea for Mother's Day this year, as well as a few lovely presents. A model child! I scoured my books to see what I fancied making a few weeks in advance. I'm prone to stressing out and with a few elements to make I needed to be organised! I think it turned out pretty well, it's a great excuse to get my nice cake stand out! I wish we had room so I could keep it out but alas it only comes out on special occasions! Keeps it safe I suppose. It went down extremely well and there were enough leftovers to feed us for a few days - what a shame it meant eating cakes and scones for days!!

My savoury section was a Smoked Mackerel Pate, an adapted recipe from the National Cookbook by Oliver Peyton (review to come next week). The original recipe was a kipper pate which I made and was completely delicious so I decided to make it with mackerel. It's super easy, completely ridiculously easy so I thought it would be a good choice when I had other things to make. Certainly a lot simplier than a ham terrine like I made last year. The recipe is just smoked fish, softened butter (though not half the amount stated - no need if the fish is moist), cayenne pepper, tabasco, Worcestershire sauce and plenty of lemon juice. I will make this pate again and again, delicious. Served on toasted ciabatta with cornichons - the king of all pickles!

The next element was Hazelnut Blondies from the Hummingbird Bakery Cookbook. I made some peanut butter blondies the week before from Eric Lanlard's Home Bake (again, review to come soon) and the result was quite different but both very tasty. I changed the pecans stated to hazelnuts and made only half the amount. They ended up pretty thin but this wasn't a problem. The white chocolate was melted in with the butter so it made the blondies pretty sweet and squidgy which was a nice contrast with the crushed, crunchy hazelnuts. I'd had hazelnut blondies from Marks and Spencer in their Valentine's meal deal this year and they came with some salted caramel so I decided to do the same thing. Really added another dimension to the flavour. I didn't make the caramel - it came in a jar from Marks. It's very tempting just to grab a spoonful of it every time you're in the kitchen!

My rosewater choux buns. These started out in my head as rosewater eclairs with pretty pink icing, things didn't quite go to plan. I knew I had to buy rosewater but I could have sworn we had red food colouring in the house. It was too late when I found out we didn't! Then it turned out we didn't have the right nozzle on the piping bag so I decided to make choux buns instead. Oh well! My icing had rosewater in it, it was a little too liquid but it kept my coloured sugars, heart and glitter on the top so it was fine. I also put rosewater in the whipped cream. It was quite a subtle flavour - I didn't want it to taste like perfume - but it worked well. Not as impressive as I had imagined it but still quite nice. I had to add glitter to something!

I used Raymond Blanc's recipe from his new Kitchen Secrets book. The recipe was great and made lovely choux pastry. They were a little bit greasy but they had a good flavour.

Lastly I made the Brown Sugar and Mascarpone Scones from Lorraine Pascale's Baking Made Easy which I reviewed last week. I was so happy with this scones. They were really light and rose beautifully. They weren't overly sweet as I thought they might be and they were the perfect foil for some jam and cream.

They were simple to make, I did it by hand rather than in a food processor and the mixture was made in about 5 minutes. I have lots of mascarpone left so I think I'll make a pasta dish with the remainder but I think I'll have to start buying mascarpone regularly as these scones were so yummy.

The food was all washed down with some jasmine tea. I love my Celia Birtwell mug, a great find from TK Maxx. Roll on the next afternoon tea! I have many more recipes that can be tried out!

After all those cakes I feel I need this gorgeous domed cake stand in my life. So pretty and an amazing price. A trip to Ikea is now on the cards! I don't actually cook big cakes but that's not the point! If not I could get this mini cake stand instead. Aw!

James Martin - My Kitchen Cookbook Review + afternoon tea take two

My grandparents were over from France during the summer so I decided that an afternoon tea would be a nice British thing to do and oh so fashionable! As with my previous attempt at a full afternoon tea I tried to make as many things as possible in advance so I didn't cry on the day! I think all were impressed with how it turned out. Ooooo .... pretty!

The scones were not made by me, made by my fair Mama from her Good Housekeeping 'Cooking is Fun' cookbook which can safely be called vintage! It may be older than me but it does make very nice scones, back when food was 'proper'.

For the other offerings I used a combination of Rachel Allen's Bake cookbook and James Martin's My Kitchen. I'll be focussing on James Martin's book today - the brownies and the ham terrine.

Look at how much effort I go to - flower shaped toast with smoked salmon!!

On the strength of the success of the ham terrine from my last afternoon tea I decided to buy the book - it deserved a place in my collection (plus it was a bargainous £6.99 - huzzah!). There are honestly only a handful of recipes I wouldn't try, and that's only because I don't eat things such as rabbit or lamb. Recipes are sorted by seasons and all look very unfussy and simple to make which makes me believe that Mr Martin really does make this food at home.

There is a nice short introduction to each chapter with a few examples of what is in season at that time of year. It makes it look easy to shop locally and seasonally when food looks this tasty.

Recipes include Sliced duck breast with winter stir-fry and Scallops with black pudding and apple puree, both of which I made from the taster booklet from Good Food magazine. The winter stir-fry made a very nice accompaniment to the juicy duck and manages to make sprouts tasty! The scallops and black pudding made a gorgeous dish with apple and has quickly become part of my repertoire. It is in fact making an appearance for La Mama's birthday meal next week if nice scallops can be found.

The pressed ham terrine was ultra successful once again, in fact I think it was even better this time. Still no ham hock found so used a gammon joint and boiled it till it fell apart beautifully. I tore the ham into smaller pieces this time so it looked a little bit prettier, but only vaguely! But who cares when it tastes this good?! I was glad that there was plenty left to eat more later on toast.

The other recipe I used was the Black cherry brownie recipe from the summer chapter. He admits that there is nothing particularly special about this recipe but it's the best one he's found in 20 years. Would I agree? Well, again they just didn't set very well. I'm not very lucky with brownies. They did taste absolutely yummy though and the fresh cherries cut through the chocolate nicely. It was quite a job trying to get nice petite squares onto my cake stand though! The rest of the pan of brownies were eaten with a spoon with cream on top. Double indulgence. Oh, and obligatory glitter.

So pretty darn successful, bar a soggy brownie- definitely one that everyone should add to their cookbook collection. Next I want to try Slow-roasted tomatoes with Worcestershire sauce, Potted salt beef with gherkins and Grilled halibut with champ and lemon caper butter. Tempted yet?

Next time, afternoon tea part two with Rachel Allen.

Afternoon tea

I really like the idea of afternoon tea but my appetite isn't big enough for all those lovely layers of food, same goes for my mum. Which is a shame, so I thought I would make my own version and we could take our time to eat it and come back to anything we couldn't finish. It actually lasted 2 days which I didn't mind at all!



The contents were as follows:

Open walnut bread sandwiches with crabstick and cream cheese, smoked salmon and cream cheese and my homemade ham terrine.

Lemon drizzle cake and eclairs

Glace cherry scones - oooo, look at the sparkle on my lemon drizzle! Magic!

I spent most of Saturday making everything to save time on Sunday. Things were mostly successful but I lost the will to live slightly by the end!! Plus I had cats trying to steal bits of ham and cream at every available opportunity!

The ham terrine recipe came from Delicious magazine - March 2010 and is a James Martin recipe. He calls it a 'pressed ham terrine' and was taken from his My Kitchen cookbook. This was probably the most successful item from my afternoon tea. It took a long time to make, but not too much effort. The recipe called for ham hock but unfortunately I couldn't find one in the supermarket so I used a gammon instead. I boiled this on friday night, keeping some of the cooking liquor. On the saturday I mixed the liquid with gelatine and spent a while thickly shredding the ham - this is where Betsey the cat came in! Layers of ham, parsley and liquid were built up - I used a loaf tin with 2 layers of cling film to make it in. Overnight in the fridge and it was set and delicious for the sunday.

Jelly is always my favourite bit of a pork pie and I got mad for aspic when I'm in France so this is perfect - ham suspended in jelly! It's the first time I've worked with gelatine too and it was really easy. Ok, so it really doesn't look that appealing, I'll call it rustic! The recipe did call for big pieces though. But it seriously tasted yummy, and there was plenty to go around. It didn't slice brilliantly, more something that you'd tear into and pile on bread. I will definitely be making this again, might add a little booze into the jelly and try ham hock instead to see if it makes a real difference.

Big thumbs up for James Martin.

The lemon drizzle recipe came from Cakes by Liz Herbert and is part of the Women's Institute cookbook range (a review to come soon). I adapted the recipe from their lemon and blueberry drizzle cake, removing the blueberries and adding some mixed candied peel for a slightly different texture. I made these in silicone cupcake holders rather than making a big cake. I always fancy little cakes more than a slice of something bigger. The cake was a little heavy, I'm pretty rubbish when it comes to making light cakes, but they tasted nice and the addition of the edible glitter on top made them more attractive.

I've never made eclairs before, my mum used to make them for every event going but life gets in the way and they're cheap enough to buy ready-made. However, determined to make everything myself I followed the Homemade Eclairs in Good Food Magazine - March 2010. The mixture was quick to make, slightly scary when I added the egg and I thought everything had split, but with a huge amount of arm strength it all came together. Phew! I couldn't be bothered piping small eclairs so I made 4 round round one just using a spoon to spread the mixture onto greaseproof paper. Perfect, 30 minutes later I had choux buns! Some melted chocolate on top and some whipped cream mixed with vanilla extract and it was all go. This has made me excited to make more - next time with crispy caramel on top and some creme patissiere inside. Mmmm.

Lastly the scones. Bored of me yet?! This recipe came from Fresh Baked by Louise Pickford. This is how well I know my own cookbook collection - I borrowed this from the library and thought it looked really good. Duh, I already own it! Oops! Good thing I wasn't buying it again! I really need to carry a list around with me of what I already have. I divided the quantities as I only wanted 4, not 12. Instead of sultanas I put glace cherries, my mum's choice but always mine too. The mixture was quick to make but I think just a bit too much milk was added as the scones spread in the oven so they weren't very easy to split and broke apart. Not that we cared that much as they tasted delicious with plenty of cream and cherry jam. My joint favourite with the terrine.

Sorry for the long post, as you can tell this was pretty epic to make (and to eat!) and I will not be repeating this process anytime soon! Maybe when my grandparents come from France in the summer, I'll have forgotten what a pain it is by then! But it was all most appreciated by the main lady of the day and I was happy to finally get to use my Laura Ashley cake stand.