Christmas is a time of magical anticipation and intense joy. It is a time of light and warmth in a season of cold and darkness. Some of our most glorious childhood memories are inspired by the smells of fresh pine needles, hot spiced cider and Christmas cookies baking in the oven. Christmas is forever associated with abundance and generous sharing. Our Christmas Tea goes over the top with old favorites that we look forward to sharing with our loved ones year after year.
We also realize that Christmas is the busiest time of the year. However, let us remind you that the very purpose of afternoon tea is to create a quiet respite from the stress and hurry of our busy world. Of course you should give yourself permission to simplify our menu if necessary. Perhaps you just cannot find the time to make the magnificent Danish Christmas Wreath by hand, even if it is truly a Christmas gift that your guests will never forget. Please let go of any guilt or remorse about what you cannot do. A beautiful store-bought Stollen would be a perfect substitute for our home-made Danish pastry.
We also realize that Christmas is the busiest time of the year. However, let us remind you that the very purpose of afternoon tea is to create a quiet respite from the stress and hurry of our busy world. Of course you should give yourself permission to simplify our menu if necessary. Perhaps you just cannot find the time to make the magnificent Danish Christmas Wreath by hand, even if it is truly a Christmas gift that your guests will never forget. Please let go of any guilt or remorse about what you cannot do. A beautiful store-bought Stollen would be a perfect substitute for our home-made Danish pastry.
Alternatively, to create a more relaxing mood for your guests as well as yourself, you might consider hosting your Christmas Tea after December 25, as would be common in Europe and in traditional and orthodox Christian communities. For Catholics and Anglicans, for example, Christmas is not a single day but a season, hence the song, “The Twelve Days of Christmas.” It would certainly be appropriate to celebrate a Christmas Tea any time between Christmas Day and the Feast of the Epiphany, which is commemorated on the second Sunday after Christmas, usually around January 5. The days after Christmas can be a calm and happy time to gather with friends and keep the Christmas spirit alive.
Menu
Beverages:
Hot Spiced Cider
Earl Gray Tea
Cranberry Herbal Tea
Savories:
Corned Beef Sandwiches with Spicy Mustard
Mascarpone Sandwiches with Red and Green Pepper Jelly
Cheese Tray with Dried Fruits and Nuts and Whole Meal Almond Biscuits
Suggested Cheeses: Cotswold, Leyden with Cumin, Brie, Manchego with Quince Paste, Gorgonzola, Fourme D’Ambert
Tea Breads:
Danish Christmas Wreath or Christmas Stollen
Sweets:
Caramel Toffee Yule Log
Christmas Trifle
Aged Raisin Gingerbread with Hard Sauce
Steamed Pumpkin Pudding with Candied Cranberries
Assorted Christmas Cookies, including:
Spritz Cookies
Orange Ginger Cookies
Chocolate Meringues
Beverages:
Hot Spiced Cider
Earl Gray Tea
Cranberry Herbal Tea
Savories:
Corned Beef Sandwiches with Spicy Mustard
Mascarpone Sandwiches with Red and Green Pepper Jelly
Cheese Tray with Dried Fruits and Nuts and Whole Meal Almond Biscuits
Suggested Cheeses: Cotswold, Leyden with Cumin, Brie, Manchego with Quince Paste, Gorgonzola, Fourme D’Ambert
Tea Breads:
Danish Christmas Wreath or Christmas Stollen
Sweets:
Caramel Toffee Yule Log
Christmas Trifle
Aged Raisin Gingerbread with Hard Sauce
Steamed Pumpkin Pudding with Candied Cranberries
Assorted Christmas Cookies, including:
Spritz Cookies
Orange Ginger Cookies
Chocolate Meringues
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Recipes Included:
Hot Spiced Cider This festive punch sets the mood for the Christmas celebration, and it is very easy to prepare. You can keep it warm in your best looking Dutch oven or cooking pot on the kitchen stove and bring cups of hot cider on a tray to the guests in the Tea Room, or offer it to the guests as they arrive, one by one. This is not an alcoholic drink, so the guests can drink as many cups as they wish. Roast Beef or Corned Beef Sandwiches Corned Beef Sandwiches have been popular for several centuries, and they are indeed a handy way to use up leftover Corned Beef. Of course you can also buy sliced corned beef from a meat shop or a delicatessen. You might want to add a little extra zest to your Christmas Corned Beef Sandwiches by spreading the bread with spicy mustard. Prepared horseradish is another condiment that pairs well with Corned Beef to make really tasty sandwiches. Whole Meal Almond Biscuits Most of us never think of baking our own crackers, but these delightful little “biscuits,” a charming cross between crackers and cookies, are well worth making, as they are better than the store-bought versions of either. They are both slightly sweet and slightly savory and will be festive partners for the elegant cheeses and dried fruits you will be serving on your Christmas cheese tray. Danish Pastry Christmas Wreath This stunning Danish Pastry Christmas Wreath will be the star of your Christmas Tea, if in fact, you have the stamina (and the five extra hours plus overnight chilling for the dough) to devote to this project. If this process seems just too overwhelming, buy a beautiful Christmas Stollen (German Christmas Bread) and serve it warm with butter. We do not recommend commercial Danish pastries. If you do decide to make the Danish Pastry Christmas Wreath, you will be delighted to discover that this very reliable recipe will produce two large pastry wreaths, one for Christmas Day or Christmas Eve, and one for your Christmas Tea Party. These wreaths can be carefully wrapped in plastic and frozen. After thawing, these wreaths can be gently warmed, iced and decorated for Christmas presentation. Caramel Toffee Yule Log The Bouche de Noel, or Yule Log, is a Christmas tradition in French speaking regions. It is an ingenious sponge cake, filled and rolled up to resemble a log, reminding us of the warmth of the hearth during the cold winters. Yule Logs can be any flavor, with a variety of possible fillings and icing decorations on top. Some of these decorations are very elaborate, including marzipan mushrooms and chocolate icing carefully raked to resemble tree bark. Often the platter on which the Bouche de Noel is served is also decorated with holly or evergreen sprigs. Our Yule Log is caramel and almond praline flavored and designed to look somewhat like an organic log, minus the extra hours it would require to make marzipan mushrooms, leaves, and perhaps tiny elves. The tan caramel icing will be sprinkled with pulverized Heath Bars, creating the brown look and texture of a log. This is also a delicious creation, and the whole thing can be made in advance, placed on a decorative platter, and frozen until Christmas Tea Party time. Christmas Trifle As the name of this dessert suggests, Trifle is a food of humble origins. Culinary lore claims that this “trifling” concoction was developed by English home cooks, or perhaps nannies, to use up leftover pound cake. By adding jam, fruits and other sweets that happened to be in the larder to the stale cake, these inventive cooks created an intriguing collection of tasty morsels that appealed to the curious appetites of children. When some unsung genius of the kitchen decided to bind all of these little sweets together with home made custard, one of the greatest desserts of all time came into being. And Trifle became a grown-up dessert when some other genius tried spiking the pound cake with sherry before adding all the other ingredients. You may have noticed that we offer several different Trifle recipes for Afternoon Tea, including a Leftover Pie Gingerbread Trifle in our Post Thanksgiving Tea menu and a Peach and Raspberry Trifle for our Summer Afternoon Tea. Even the Vanilla Custard with Sliced Bananas and Vanilla wafers in our Afternoon Tea with Children is a variation of Trifle. The beauty of Trifle is that not only is it wildly popular with everyone, but it is gorgeous to look at when layered and served in a footed clear glass bowl through which all the assorted ingredients are visible. In addition, the possible combinations of ingredients that could comprise a Trifle are limited only by the creator’s imagination. Any kind of cake can be used; thus we can have chocolate trifles, lemon trifles, coconut trifles, pumpkin trifles, etc. One can also add nuts, fruits and berries, broken pieces of cookie and dollops of jam. Our Christmas Trifle contains pound cake, dark cherries, slivered toasted almonds, broken pieces of amaretti cookies, and raspberry jam. The red cherries and dabs of jam create a festive winter palette combined with the creamy cake and custard, all topped off with wisps of snow-like whipped cream and crowned with another cherry. If you have never made your own custard before, now is the time to learn. There is nothing difficult about the process, and you will discover that the possibilities of serving home made custard go far beyond Trifle. There is nothing like warm custard served with cake in the winter instead of ice cream. Aged Raisin Ginger Fruitcake with Hard Sauce This exquisite old-fashioned dark, spicy fruitcake can be made weeks or months before Christmas and aged in brandy, Kahlua or fruit juice. This is the Christmas fruitcake for people who think they don’t like fruitcake and for those of you who dislike candied fruits and peels. The fruits in this cake are raisins, currants and candied ginger, and the secret ingredient, in addition to a blend of aromatic holiday spices, is strong coffee. This recipe makes three loaf cakes, one for Christmas Eve or Christmas Day, one for our Christmas Tea, and one for giving to a friend who appreciates fruitcake. Fortunately, there are still many of us fruitcake lovers left in this world. Fruitcake should always be served with hard sauce, a simple combination of butter and powdered sugar. Hard Sauce appears to be a misnomer for a soft and very simple combination of butter and powdered sugar. In its most elemental form, Hard Sauce is just one stick of softened butter mixed with one cup of powdered sugar and served at room temperature with a butter knife so guests can spread the desired amount on their fruitcake. However, the word “hard” does not in fact refer to the texture of the sauce. It refers to the fact that “hard liquor,” such as brandy, rum or whiskey, was traditionally added to this festive fruitcake topping. Hard sauce is also wonderful on a variety of other rich holiday desserts and breads such as the Steamed Pumpkin Pudding, also on our Christmas Tea menu. We have embellished the basic recipe for Hard Sauce by adding grated orange peel and a few drops of fresh orange juice. There is truly no limit to the flavor variations that can be added to Hard Sauce. Lemon peel, almond extract, rum, brandy, or nutmeg are just a few possibilities. Feel free to experiment. Steamed Pumpkin Pudding with Candied Cranberries Everyone has heard of Plum Pudding, the quintessential Victorian Christmas Dessert. Steamed puddings, popular throughout the British Isles, are basically cakes that are steamed in a metal pudding mold (or a metal or ceramic bowl) in a large pot of simmering water on top of the stove. Dried fruits and nuts left over from summer are often added, along with spices, to create a hearty, moist and festive holiday dessert. We have added golden raisins to our pumpkin pudding, which will make a splendid presentation served from a pedestal surrounded by a ring of glistening candied cranberries. You can also spread a little of the orange Hard Sauce (see the recipe above) on the slices of pudding at serving time. Spritz Cookies German inspired Spritz cookies are synonymous with Christmas time, but one must own a cookie press to make these delicate and charmingly shaped little butter cookies. A cookie press is not a costly investment, and you can use it every holiday season for the rest of your life. Now is also the time to stock up on red and green colored sugar to sprinkle on the cookies or even food coloring to turn the dough a festive green so the little round cookies will resemble decorated Christmas wreaths. There is nothing like making Spritz cookies to help us get into the holiday spirit, and these delicious little bites will make a stunning presentation on the tea table, especially if you serve them from a tiered cookie server. Orange Ginger Cookies Many recipes for holiday ginger cookies abound, and making gingerbread men is a Christmas tradition. However, if you don’t have quite enough time for such an elaborate undertaking as making gingerbread men, these orange ginger cookies are the answer. They are a sophisticated combination of ground almonds, candied orange peel and crystallized ginger, and they only get better with age. Rose has made them during the holiday season every year for decades, and they have always been warmly welcomed. These chewy cookies last for several days, or longer, and travel well. They make wonderful Christmas gifts. Chocolate Meringue Cookies These delightful little crispy bites complete the trio of Christmas Cookies for our Christmas Tea. They are composed almost exclusively of egg whites and sugar, to which we have added mini chocolate chips. You can use the 6 egg whites that you will have left over from making the custard for the Christmas Trifle, so nothing will go to waste. We think the visual and tactile contrasts, as well as the variety of flavors, of the three Christmas cookies we have selected will make a festive presentation for your tea table. |
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