We believe in Tea and Cake!

The history of a tea party started with Anna the Duchess of Bedford in the early 1800's.  In England at that time people would have only breakfast and dinner.  Dinner happened to be quite late around 8 or 9 in the evening. The duchess would have a "sinking spell" in the middle of the day and her servants would sneak her a pot of tea and some bread or cookies.  Anna decided to make that part of her day an event.  She proceded to invite friends over to the Belvoir Castle where she lived to enjoy 'afternoon tea' around 5pm.  Thus the tradition spread and is now one of the signature English mealtimes for the poorest of poor to the richest of rich. 

The 22 hours I spent working on our afternoon tea party was hardly a relaxing experience. Having given absolutely NO prep to what all 30 of us pastry students were to be making for this very fancy event we went in Tuesday morning hoping for the best. The chef had given all of us one recipe that we would be in charge of and needed to complete from start to finish. Doesn't sound too bad now does it?? Well my chef came up to me after and said "Sarah, now I have given you the more involved dessert, normally I put two people on this one, but you can handle it"...compliment, yes, intimidating, most definitely! My dessert was a chocolate macaron with a coffee creme brule filling decorated with a vanilla bean creme chantilly, a disk of decorated chocolate, and a two toned chocolate cigarette (see photo above).  After the absolute chaos for 7 hours of day 1, I have to be honest I was not feeling super excited about day 2. Oh and did I mention that the elevator in our building stopped working? Oh yes I, along with all of my other classmates, climbed 4 flights of stairs about 20 times that day carrying up gardeners-soil size bags of chocolate and other ingredients up and down and up again from the production kitchen in the basement.

Inevitably day 2 did come and begrudgingly I dragged myself out of bed to shower...this was a big event after all. Thankfully two of my favorite people in London were coming as my guests for the tea party that afternoon. I finished my dessert quite early that morning, because all I had to do was assembly. My chef had me run between all the kitchens helping people who had fallen a bit behind or who had a lot of sugar and chocolate decorations. I deserved a super hero cape after that morning. Around 12:30 my chef said "Sarah we still need to make scones...here is the recipe, double it, and can you just deal with it?"..."absolutely!" I said with enthusiasm. Down to the production kitchen I went to get ingredients for about 200+ scones. I ran upstairs and started putting it together. Thankfully by that point my classmates were starting to finish up their desserts and started to help me. Nicole and I had whipped those scones out like no bodies business! We were then sent upstairs to speak with our other pastry chef about what else needed to be completed for the afternoon. We were told that we needed to go get the clotted cream and the jam from the production kitchen, put it in some pastry bags, wrap them all up and get them in the refrigerator ready to go for the afternoon. Off we went back down to the production kitchen and into the dairy/meat refrigerator we went...imagine a normal sized closet with 20 boxes filled each with 3 whole ducks standing in your way...along with about 10 baskets full of eggs, cheese, milk, and other such ingredients. The clotted cream was in the back corner in the back of the bottom shelf, and with an unbroken egg rolling around precariously on the floor we carefully moved the very heavy boxes of ducks all while being careful not to break the single egg rolling on the floor. We would just start laughing every few minutes because there was just so much stuff in the refrigerator and with boxes of ducks stacked higher than our heads we were just hoping to get out of there alive. Amazingly we got the clotted cream, disposed of the precarious egg, and we started carrying over all the desserts from our school to the hotel where the event was being held. Imagine 30 pastry students walking across the street with hundreds of desserts...definitely stopped a little traffic. While the event went great and everyone loved the desserts, the unnecessary chaos was most definitely preventable with a little more communication and organization. 

One of 100 trays we set up for the Afternoon Tea Party
Photo courtesy of my classmate Napa

One of several display tables we had set up for the tea party!
Photo compliments of my classmate Napa

With the Royal Wedding on Friday there was no rest for the weary. On Thursday morning I headed to my 8am class with a tent and sleeping bag in hand. Four of us decided to camp out for the wedding in hopes to catch a glimpse of the future King and Queen. At 11am Nicole and I ran from school straight to Buckingham Palace to try to get the best spot we could. Front row center we had the best seats in the house! Being interviewed and having your photo taken by about every news camera in the world is a hard job, but someone has to do it. I don't really know what all those celebrities complain about! We actually ran into a young couple from Houston and they decided to camp out with us. We had pizza delivered to the sidewalk and had an absolutely incredible experience meeting people from all over the world. Around 12:30pm the police closed off all access to the parade route, so it was only the people camping out. There was one point around 3am when we were just casually walking around a beautifully lit up Buckingham Palace and the Victoria Fountain with some of my best friends, no cars, and very few people, when I thought "wow this is one of those moments I will never forget". With maybe 1 hour of a very cold sleep on the sidewalk under our belts the festivities started around 10am. We saw everyone going and coming from the church. There were huge speakers set up in front of the palace so we could all hear the ceremony. I have never seen anything like it...thousands of people completely dead silent while listening to Westminster choir's positively angelic and chilling voices and William and Kate taking their vows with everyone cheering. It is strange how I felt such a part of their special day, even though I don't know them at all. Congratulations William and Kate! That was an experience I will treasure and never forget for the rest of my life.

The next week started bread week and I have never made more of it in my life! I had a boulongerie in my kitchen. 

With so much bread from two days of class, I promptly hosted a "Bread Eating Party". We had sandwiches and breakfast for dinner. What and event it was!