A cozy tea party picnic by the river, with tea sandwiches, homemade scotch eggs, scones and clotted cream, and enough thrifted vintage charm to make it feel like a proper English afternoon tea outdoors.
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Quick Look
- 🫖 Party: Tea Party Picnic
- 📍 Setting: Riverside, in the woods
- 👪 Serves: 4-6
- ⏲️ Prep Time: Most food can be made or bought the day before
- 💭 Top Tip: Real china tea cups turn a picnic into an unforgettable afternoon tea party.
Why You'll Love This Party:
- Thrifted vintage pieces, wicker baskets, and mismatched teacups that make it feel special without spending much.
- Works as a hot tea or iced tea, hot or cold day either way.
- A full British tea menu with real homemade scotch eggs and custard creams cookies.
- Easy to transport with a wagon and picnic baskets, even to a spot tucked in the woods.
- Who doesn't love a tea party, and what could be better than a tea party in the most beautiful outdoor picnic setting?
Who doesn't love a tea party, and what could be better than a tea party in the most beautiful outdoor picnic setting? This summer I put together a British inspired tea party picnic, with a proper English menu of tea sandwiches, homemade scotch eggs, scones and cream, shortbread, custard creams, and vintage decor, right on the bank of the river with Heather, my friend from the UK, and our little girls. It felt only right to go full British with the menu, a little taste of home for her, right down to the scotch eggs and proper clotted cream.
Years ago I spent a year at school in England and I had a proper tea party for the first time. All these years later it's still my favorite way to celebrate. And turning it into a picnic on a beautiful summer day with friends, made something that was already great, the greatest ever!
If you love the idea of tea outdoors, you might also like our How to Host a Tea Party guide, or our Tea Party Food: The Complete Guide to Sandwiches, Scones and Sweets for even more recipe ideas.
Tea Party Picnic Menu
A traditional afternoon tea follows three courses: savory finger sandwiches and bites first, then scones with jam and cream, and finally an assortment of sweets. Everything is meant to be delicate and bite sized, made for nibbling over conversation. For our tea party picnic, we leaned into a very classic British inspired menu and followed those same three courses, just packed up picnic style instead of served on a tiered stand.
Tea Sandwiches and Savory Bites
For an authentic afternoon tea picnic, start with tea sandwiches and savory bites. Ours included:
- Mini sausage rolls, picked up from our favourite local bakery
- Cucumber sandwiches (get our easy cucumber sandwich recipe here)
- Egg salad on mini croissants (get our egg salad sandwich recipe here)
- Homemade Scotch eggs (get the Scotch egg recipe here)
I packaged everything in paper bakery boxes for easy transport, along with a few vintage enamelware containers I had on hand. Store bought is always a fair option for a picnic, no one needs to make everything from scratch. Pack the sandwiches just before you leave and keep them in a cooler bag if you have any distance to walk. Same goes for the clotted cream, it holds up much better cold.
The Scotch eggs were homemade, hard boiled eggs wrapped in sausage meat and coated in breadcrumbs, and they're a true British picnic classic. Portable, delicious, and always a hit. Find the Scotch egg recipe here.
No British bakery nearby, or don't feel like making scotch eggs from scratch? Many specialty British or import shops have a bakery counter with fresh scotch eggs, and often fresh or frozen sausage rolls you can bake at home. Either way, slice them into bite sized pieces before packing, easier to eat picnic style. Or keep it simple and stick to sandwiches, our Tea Party Food Guide has plenty more sandwich ideas to round out the savory course without any of the fussier items.
Scones with Clotted Cream and Jam
No tea party picnic is complete without scones and clotted cream. We made our own scones. Find our Easy Food Processor Scones recipe here. We also brought along jam and clotted cream.
Clotted cream can be tricky to find, but many grocery stores now carry it, and whipped cream works well in a pinch.
Drinks
No proper afternoon tea picnic goes without tea. We packed a thermos and sipped it alongside the sweets all afternoon, served in mismatched vintage teacups collected from thrift stores over the years. They weren't precious, so nobody worried about breaking one, but they added so much charm.
Since it was a hot day, I also packed lemonade in reusable glass bottles for the girls, more British than iced tea in my books. If you'd rather serve iced tea instead, it travels just as well in a mason jar or thermos. Instead of a bulky cooler, I used a galvanized bucket filled with ice, which worked perfectly and looked pretty too.
Desserts
Everybody's favorite course of tea party has to be the desserts. What's a British summer without fresh strawberries? We piled them onto a cake stand alongside a mix of homemade and store bought treats.
There were also lots of baked treats. When I picked up the sausage rolls at my favourite local bakery I also picked up some Empire cookies -a real favourite of mine. And here's a great tip for your picnic planning -make it easier on yourself by picking up some of the food and not making everything yourself.
I picked up some Empire cookies at the bakery, along with some shortbread (or try our own Vanilla Shortbread Cookies recipe here).
But the real star was the homemade custard creams. These are British cookies -or biscuits as they call them and they're buttery, delicately sweet, and the perfect companion to a cup of tea. Get my homemade custard cream recipe here.
The Setting: A Picnic by the River
While I set everything up, our girls went paddling in the river, a very British term for wading, though by the end they were fully swimming. It kept everyone happily occupied while I got the tea party picnic ready and my friend watched our girls.
I set up right on the riverbank, starting with a few pretty vintage wool blankets, perfect for sitting on. It's damp when you're picnicking, you might want to use a ground sheet underneath your blanket. Then I layered the prettiest vintage embroidered tablecloth from the thrift store over top. A tea party picnic is the perfect excuse to bring out every pretty vintage piece you own, and mixing it all together. Mixing and matching is exactly what gives it that cottagecore feel. Different florals, blankets in soft faded colours, cushions piled on top of each other, nothing coordinated too perfectly, is exactly the cozy look we were going for. That's what makes it feel special rather than staged.
The little details are what really set the stage. A cake stand for the sweets, a jar of fresh flowers, a stack of cushions to lean back on, these aren't strictly necessary for a picnic, but they're what turn a basic blanket-on-the-ground into something that feels like an occasion. We picked daisies and wildflowers growing right along the riverbank and tucked them into a mason jar, so the flowers were as wild as the setting itself. It's a bit of a luxury to bring along pillows and a cake stand, but so worth it for the prettiest possible picnic.
We used a wagon to haul everything down the path through the woods to our spot by the river. My favourite pieces to bring along are the wicker picnic baskets. I've collected from thrift stores over the years, they're sturdy enough for the walk in, and nothing says proper picnic quite like a wicker picnic hamper. Between the wagon and the baskets, even a fully styled tea party picnic tucked away in the woods isn't too difficult to set up.
The mismatched vintage teacups tie the whole look together too. Mine came from thrift stores over the years, picked up one or two at a time, never a full matching set. They're not precious, so nobody worries about breaking one, but they add more charm than a brand new set ever could.
What to Pack for a Tea Party Picnic
The hardest part of any tea party picnic is the packing. Sandwiches need a cooler to stay fresh, tea needs a good thermos to stay hot, and bakery boxes or reusable containers keep everything from getting squished on the walk in.
The easiest trick is choosing finger food that doesn't need to be cut or plated once you arrive, and pre-slicing anything that does.
Once the practical side is sorted, that's where you get to have fun. Real teacups and saucers instead of paper, mismatched vintage silverware, cloth napkins, a cake stand, cushions, a jar of fresh flowers, these aren't things a picnic needs, but they're what make it feel like an occasion instead of just lunch outside.
- Vintage wool blankets and a vintage embroidered tablecloth
- Wicker picnic baskets, and a wagon if you're carrying everything any distance
- A small cooler bag for sandwiches and cream
- A cake stand for the sweets
- Mismatched vintage teacups, silverware, and real cloth napkins
- Cushions and a jar of fresh flowers (foraged or store-bought both work beautifully)
- A thermos for hot tea
- A galvanized bucket filled with ice for cold drinks
A few practical extras worth tucking in: a plastic bag for dirty dishes so they don't make a mess in your basket on the way home, paper towels just in case, and bug spray and sunscreen if you're setting up anywhere near water or trees. Bring a garbage bag too, so you can leave your spot as pretty as you found it.
Frequently Asked Questions
Shortbread and custard creams can be made a day or two ahead. Scones are best made the day of if you can manage it, they're at their finest fresh from the oven, though they'll still be good the next day in a pinch. Sandwiches are best assembled the morning of, or right before you leave, and kept cool in a cooler bag until you're ready to eat.
Whipped cream is a good substitute if clotted cream isn't available near you, though it's worth checking a specialty British shop and some regular grocery stores are carrying it now.
Not at all, but mismatched vintage teacups from the thrift store add a lot of charm for very little cost, and they don't need to match to look beautiful together.
Either works well. A thermos keeps hot tea warm for hours, and iced tea travels just as easily in a mason jar. On a hot day, we usually go with lemonade or iced tea instead.
More Tea Party Ideas
With a tea party picnic to enjoy along the river with good friends, life really is a party.
If you try this Tea Party Picnic or any other recipe on my blog please leave a star rating and let me know how it went in the comments below. Thanks for visiting today!
dnr says
Norma, Thanks so very much. I hope you do have one too, it was so much fun. Share a picture with me over on our Facebook page if you do!
Happy Picnicing, Dannyelle
Norma says
What a lovely lovely idea. Made me want to be there. I think I will give give it a try.