Easter Tea Party

Yesterday we hosted a little Easter Tea Party for lunch, with lots of family favourites, that I thought I’d share. Turkey or Ham is great, but this made for a nice change and it was so, so yummy.

I set up the party in the dinning room. Our fun centre piece was a tray of wheat grass that we’d been growing for about a week and half. I wanted to do a large trough style planter for Easter, but couldn’t find a container large and shallow enough to suit. What’s a blogger to do…make their own. I found some scrap wood in the basement, cut it, screwed it together and gave it a little white wash of paint. It’s a little wonky, but we’ll call it rustic. 😉 I lined it with a plastic bag, and soaked and sprouted my wheat grass. It grew really quickly, and is such a welcome sight of green this time of year when we’re itching to get out into the garden, but it’s not quite time yet around here. I added a few little butterflies for fun.

I also used some pretty hurricane vases, I’ve had for years, and added some sweet Easter egg filler from the dollar store. Since I already had pink and blue on the table, I decided to go with all the pastel Easter colours and used these pretty polka dot plates. And, aren’t the cute Easter napkins sweet. Love how the grass on them related to the centre piece too.

I used pretty pink depression glass tea cups and pulled out all the matching serving pieces too.

We started with finger sandwiches, veggies and dip, and some pickles. We had cucumber with cream cheese, chicken salad cups, egg salad on mini croissants, and olive tapenade, goat’s cheese and roasted red pepper on a baguette. They were so, so good.

Many years ago, when I was only 18, I lived in England for a year for school. I was introduced to cream teas; beautiful scones, served with butter, jams, and clotted cream. It was love at first taste. It can be tricky to find clotted cream here, but for my local readers, I found it at the Metro.

We also had some other sweets. I made shortbread (see the recipe I shared before here), and these sweet chocolate nests, an Easter favourite. I also made some little tarts, some mini jam ones, and some butter tarts. The other little treat was these precious chocolate cheese cake eggs. I was inspired by Steph at Raspberri Cupcakes, and used her recipe for the cheesecake filling. For the centre I used a little pear jam, with a few drops of yellow food colouring. The guests oh-ed and awe-ed over them. And they were really easy, and since they’re no-cook, my 8 year old daughter did most of it herself.

Everything was washed down with lots of tea. It was so yummy, and with all these pretty pastels, it made it feel like spring which I’m sure is coming any day now. 😉

With an Easter Tea Party like this, life really is a party! Happy Easter!