Poetry Teatime! - Our Life in the Shire

It’s been a LONG time since I’ve updated the blog. My younger two will begin 1st grade next week after Labor Day, and we are still homeschooling! One thing that we will be incorporating into our regular weekly schedule is a Poetry Teatime. So, we thought it would be fun to invite my mom over to join us for our first tea party of the school year (a week early.) I made a super yummy and entirely gluten free (and mostly dairy free) spread of fancy tea party foods. We picked some flowers from the backyard and lit a candle. It was all so lovely and we can’t wait for our next teatime!

In our Poetry basket we have the following selections

I shared this with some friends and received a lot of questions, with the top question being where did I get my adorable tea set? First of all, I’ve been looking for months! I know some people find really pretty sets from thrift shops, but I really just wanted a simple white set. I also didn’t want a toy. I wanted a real set, but one that wasn’t ridiculously expensive because…well, kids ha! When I saw this one on amazon I knew it was *the one* and I just love it!

Teapot
Cups/saucers
Sugar and creamer set
Square stand (with the sandwiches) and the cute little cake platter came from Home Goods. I love that store for this kind of stuff!
Little tiny sauce type bowls were from Target but I’ve seen them on amazon too. They seem to be the same dimensions as these.
Cute little jam spreaders

For the finger sandwiches, I used Trader Joe’s gluten free white bread and cut off the crusts. I saved them in the freezer to make bread crumbs later. Then I made the sandwiches: cream cheese (with chives and dill) and cucumber (Daiya cream cheese for my daughters), chicken salad, and salami, spinach and cheese (again, Daiya for the girls.) I made the chicken salad the night before so all I had to do was assemble the sandwiches. Since I needed to let the cream cheese soften I had to make the cucumber sandwiches that morning because I didn’t want them to be soggy. I have some other fun sandwich ideas for upcoming weeks!

I used Pamela’s gluten free mix for the scones, biscuits, and cake! To convert the cake from a plain vanilla cake to a lemon cake I simply added the zest of a couple of lemons and about 2 tbsp lemon juice and filled the remaining liquid with water according to the directions. For the frosting I made a simple lemon buttercream. I find that Earth’s Balance soy free baking sticks work very well for most things that call for butter. I also found these perfect sweetened lemon slices at Trader Joe’s and my youngest had the idea to decorate the cake with one in the center and wedges around the outside.

A quick tip on the baked goods – I mixed up the batter/dough over the weekend and made the drop biscuits and scones but did NOT bake. Instead I put them on a baking sheet into the freezer. When they were frozen solid I was able to put them in a ziptop bag so that they wouldn’t stick together. The morning of our tea party I simply pulled out as many as I wanted, put them on a baking tray while I preheated the oven. Then I put them in still mostly frozen and baked according to the directions. I find this makes for fresher results than baking and then freezing (though I’ve done that plenty of times too!) The cake I made the night before and froze in layers. It’s easier to frost a frozen cake and only takes a couple hours to thaw on the counter after you frost it.

For the scones I simply added cinnamon baking chips and cinnamon. When they cooled I made a simple icing with powdered sugar and cinnamon, adding enough water to make it pourable. Then I let the icing set before serving. I was hoping to replicate the panera cinnamon crunch scones that I can no longer have. My girls have been gluten free for years, but it’s new for me. The scones turned out amazing, but we had so much food that we really only split one between the 4 of us.

As we enjoyed our tea and treats, we read randoms selections from our poetry books. Grandma read a few as well. We ate, sipped tea and read poetry, which was really a lovely way to spend time!

For the tea, I used my electric tea kettle to boil the water. Then I put a bag of lemon tea in the cute little teapot, filled with hot water and added enough cool water to make it safe for my littles to drink. They are not huge fans of the taste of tea so I only let it steep for a moment or two before filling their cups. Honestly it was nearly clear. They added cream (macadamia milk) and a teeny tiny little bit of sugar – just to be fancy. They said it tasted delicious and they were adorable sipping it!