Welcome to the next instalment of Afternoon Tea Diaries. This time I will be sharing about the afternoon tea that we did in Glasgow. This was actually a last minute decision. We had a full day in Glasgow and we weren't 100% sure of what to do, so I booked in for an afternoon tea.
We started our day in Glasgow by catching a bus to Kelvingrove Museum, including catching a bus with a a very grumpy bus driver. One of the exhibits was all about the distinctive style of Charles Rennie Mackintosh and the famous tea rooms. Coincidentally, our afternoon tea was in one of those very tea rooms, which has been faithfully renovated in the Mackintosh style. The Willow Tea Rooms were originally opened in 1903.
Given that this was our final full day in the UK, we decided to add a glass of sparkling wine to our experience as well as our choice of tea, of which there were many, many options. The nice thing was that you could drink as much tea as you liked, and you could try as many different types of tea as you liked as well. I chose a Russian Caravan tea just because the name of it was intriguing. All the tea china was in classic blue and white, including the stand and tea pots.
I have just been looking at the website and have noticed that the menu has changed, and so it is very seasonal, but this was our menu when we visited.
And this was the stand when it arrived. As an aside I really need to remember to think about the angles so that you can seethe stand without my husband in the background! lol
And closer photos of the scones and sweet treats
As you would expect everything was delicious, but if I absolutely had to pick a favourite it would be the Peach Melba Entremet which is at the bottom of the picture. It actually sent me off on a bit of a peach obsession which resulted in my eating peach ice cream and drinking iced peach tea when we were on the next leg of our trip in Hong Kong.
Now I am thinking if there is anything peachy in the house!
Weekly meals
Saturday - Out for dinner (High Tea for dinner) Sunday - Zucchini, tomato and parmesan risotto Monday - Sausage and pasta - New Tuesday - Wednesday - Murg Makhani (Butter Chicken) New Thursday - Chicken Fricasee Friday - Out for dinner
Weekend Cooking is open to anyone who has any kind of food-related post to share: Book reviews (novel, nonfiction), cookbook reviews, movie reviews, recipes, random thoughts, gadgets, quotations, photographs, restaurant reviews, travel information, or fun food facts. If your post is even vaguely foodie, feel free to grab the button and link up anytime over the weekend. You do not have to post on the weekend. Please link to your specific post, not your blog's home page
The first Saturday of the month is when I share all the things that I baked in the previous month, which is great when you have been baking but this month I only made one thing, and it is likely that I will only be making one thing in December too!
Last week I posted about making florentines and that is the only baking I did this month. I have bought the ingredients to make another cake but ended up not making it (actually that has happened twice now), and I did offer to make another cake when my husband's team came over but that didn't happen either.
I posted about making these florentines last week
Which means that either this is a very short post or I come up with something else to post about.
For those of you who celebrate Christmas, do you ever do advent calendars? Last year I bought a famous skincare one. I love the products that I did use, but the reality is that I only just opened the last of the windows a couple of weeks ago.
This year I have been on a bit of tea journey. I was given some teas for Christmas last year, and so this year I have been exploring some differnet flavours. I therefore decided to buy the T2 advent calendar. I already know that there is going to be an issue with the opening of the windows because we go on holidays a week before Christmas and I am not taking this advent calendar with me!
It actually opens out again so in the end it is about a metre wide when it is fully open, so not ideal for opening on the plane! Of course, I can take just the teabags on the plane with me, but that's not really the point right?
The good thing about mixed collections such as this is that you get to try flavours that you wouldn't normally try. The bad thing is that sometimes it means that you try things that you don't particularly like.
I tend to only have one cup of tea a day but I am discovering that there are some flavours that don't work as your first cup of the tea of the day. For example, yesterday the flavour that I got was Packs a Peach, which was delicious but I am thinking that on days with these fruity flavours maybe I have a morning tea and then have this later in the day.
Today, when I opened the calendar window, I got a China Jasmine flavour which I enjoyed.
During the year, I have also been making tea out of these other collections as well. The yellow tin below is a collection of different breakfast teas, which has options called New York Breakfast, Melbourne Breakfast, Adelaide, Scottish, Singapore, Irish and more. My favourite is New York Breakfast, which is "A pancake-inspired tea made with full-bodied black tea, maple syrup flavours and cinnamon."
In the purple tin there is currently some Madagascan Vanilla loose leaf tea. I also have an Easter special collection which I have barely touched and more.
We have also bought multiple mugs. They have these lovely generous mugs that are great for my coffee addicted husband!
Even just looking on the website today I have found some new things I might want to buy, but I am thinking I should probably finish some of the ones I already have.
Are you doing any advent calendars this year?
I am sharing this post with In My Kitchen, hosted at Sherry's Pickings
Weekly meals
Saturday -
Sunday - Open steak and cheese sandwiches
Monday - Sausages and chips
Tuesday - Chicken Parma
Wednesday - Chorizo risoni
Thursday - Out for dinner
Friday - Leftovers
Weekend Cooking is open to anyone who has any kind of food-related post to share: Book reviews (novel, nonfiction), cookbook reviews, movie reviews, recipes, random thoughts, gadgets, quotations, photographs, restaurant reviews, travel information, or fun food facts. If your post is even vaguely foodie, feel free to grab the button and link up anytime over the weekend. You do not have to post on the weekend. Please link to your specific post, not your blog's home page
This month's choice for Cook the Books is Alice's Adventures in Wonderland by Lewis Carroll. It is such an interesting choice for Cook the Books as it isn't necessarily a book that you would consider foodie, but it is absolutely full of food references. It was also a fun read to revisit as an adult, especially when you consider that the book itself is over 150 years old, and yet it is timeless.
Reading this again reminded me of the White Night event that was held in Melbourne back in 2015. In honour of the 150th anniversary of the book being published, one of the themes for the event was Alice in Wonderland, with many of Melbourne's building being transformed into giant canvasses for projections. Here are a few of the Alice related pictures I took that night.
The adventures that Alice has after she follows the white rabbit down the rabbit hole are zany, and yet apart from the fact that the game of croquet is something that kids today might not be familiar with, pretty much everything else is still easy for us to understand. Although, I did tend to skip through the poetry but I do that in books like The Lord of the Rings too.
The most well known food reference is probably the mad hatter's tea party, but there were so many others, and I had several ideas of what to make. I ended going with something that wasn't directly related to the story. If you google for ideas there are so many elaborately decorated items - topsy turvy cakes, giant tea pots etc. Unfortunately my decorative skills do not extend to such skilled designs. I do taste good, not necessarily looks amazing!
Some of the ideas I considered were a big cake surrounded by small cakes to represent the food that Alice ate that had the effect of either making her grow big or small. I also thought about making a treacle tart or an onion tart. There were so many options.
So what did I make? We were having our first guests here for dinner at the new house, so I wanted to make something dessert worthy. I also love making chiffon cakes, so once I found my tin in one of the still packed boxes, I decided to make an Earl Grey Chiffon Cake, inspired by all the tea references in the book.
I ended up adapting a recipe which was made with French Earl Grey tea. I only had a couple of bags of French Earl Grey, and I really wanted to use just normal Earl Grey (British I guess) tea instead. The original recipe also called for orange to be included but I didn't have any. I also took some inspiration from a couple of other recipes that I found online by including some of the tea leaves in the cake mixture.
I do love making chiffon cakes (also known as angel food cake). I have made a lemon flavoured one before and a coffee cream cake that isn't called chiffon cake but uses exactly the same techniques. I might try to make a chai flavoured one next. (editted to say....the next one will be a vanilla one as per my husband's request)
The flavour might have been stronger had I used more teabags, but you could definitely taste it, particularly on the second day. There wasn't a lot left for the second day as all the family loved it, especially my nephews who both came back for seconds!
A couple of important things to note when making these kinds of cakes. Firstly, you do not butter the cake tin. You want the cake mixture to stick. It is important that the cake is left to completely cool whilst still upside down. This prevents the cake from collapsing in on itself and ensures that the texture is extremely light.
Earl Grey Tea Chiffon Cake
4 Earl Grey teabags 160ml ( ⅔ cup) boiling water 185g (1¼ cups) self-raising flour 30g (¼ cup) cornflour 1 teaspoon cream of tartar ½ teaspoon salt 6 eggs, separated 200g caster sugar, plus 110g (½ cup) extra 1 teaspoon vanilla essence 100ml vegetable oil Icing sugar, to dust
Preheat oven to 180°C (160°C fan-forced). Place an ungreased 21cm angel food cake tin on an oven tray. You can also use a bundt tin.
Place the tea bags in a small jug, pour the boiling water over and set aside to infuse until the water is warm.
Sift the flour, cornflour, cream of tartar and salt.
Whisk the egg yolks and 200g caster sugar on high speed until thick and pale then whisk in the vanilla.
Squeeze the tea bags so that you get as much flavour as possible into the water.
Cut one of the teabags and add the leaves to the egg and sugar mixture.
Add 125ml ( ½ cup) of the tea to the oil. The tea should still be warm but not hot. Add the oil mixture to the egg mixture and whisk on low speed until well combined.
With the mixer on low speed, add the flour mixture and whisk until just combined. Set aside.
In a clean bowl, whisk the egg whites on medium-high speed until soft peaks form. Add the remaining caster sugar and whisk until thick and glossy and the sugar has dissolved. Add about a third of the egg whites to the yolk mixture and use a large metal spoon or spatula to fold through until well combined. Add the remaining egg white mixture and fold until just combined.
Spoon the mixture into the ungreased tin and gently smooth the surface with the back of a metal spoon. Bake in the preheated oven for 45-50 minutes or until a skewer inserted into the cake comes out clean.
Immediately turn the cake upside down still in the tin so it is suspended, for a minimum of 2 hours. If you are using a bundt tin for this, you can invert the cake over the top of a bottle to have the same effect.
When the cake is completely cool, run a small knife around the side of the tin to release.
Dust with icing sugar and serve with whipped cream and strawberries.
I have also linked this post up with Foodies Read hosted at
Weekly meals
Saturday - Out for dinner
Sunday - Roast Pork
Monday - Beef Chilli with sweet potato wedges
Tuesday - Hainanese Chicken with bok choy and rice
Wednesday - Chicken enchiladas with rice and beans
Thursday - Out for dinner
Friday - Prawn Paella
Weekend Cooking is open to anyone who has any kind of food-related post to share: Book reviews (novel, nonfiction), cookbook reviews, movie reviews, recipes, random thoughts, gadgets, quotations, photographs, restaurant reviews, travel information, or fun food facts. If your post is even vaguely foodie, feel free to grab the button and link up anytime over the weekend. You do not have to post on the weekend. Please link to your specific post, not your blog's home page
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