OK you vipers - critique my birthday afternoon tea menu

[KickAssAngel]

So - I'm turning 50 this year and yesterday I just had a brand new oven fitted! Obviously, although it's months until my birthday, I need to start planning the menu and practising the recipes.

I'm thinking I'll have an informal open house with afternoon tea type snacks. DH will do drinks (he knows nothing about this yet, but he will). I'm a Brit living in the US and people will be VERY excited about getting a 'real' English afternoon tea.

So here's my first plans for snacks provided:
Veg platter (carrots, peppers, etc & dip), cheese & biscuit platter, & fruit platter. I'll buy these.

Cucumber sandwiches in brown bread.
Tuna mayo sandwiches in white bread
Mini quiches - asparagus & salmon; red pepper & chorizo
Scones with whipped cream & a slice of strawberry
Scones with clotted cream & strawberry jam (I need both kinds of scones as some people are so horrified at how fattening the clotted cream is. Plus, I have to make the clotted cream and it's v.v. expensive for a small amount)
Swiss roll with apricot jam & vanilla buttercream filling
BIG gooey chocolate cake with all sorts of fancy decorations and glitz.

It's only meant to be light snacks, rather than a meal, for about 20 people.

How would you improve this? Or is it perfect?

I’d be inclined to add some tiny meringues, or macaroons. Definitely different sandwiches - pinwheel, open, crusts off (top tip, use an electric carving knife to make the perfect crust off sandwich).

Also madeleines are attractive, if you’ve got a tin.

meringues are my nemesis.
Although my new magic oven might be more reliable.

DH would be ecstatic if I went for meringue over cake. We are a divided household on that issue.

ooohhhh lemon curd swiss roll! might have to make one of those right now. yum!

oh i love meringues, but I never make small ones...if you have one of those mash potato (ice cream) scoops they are absolutely fabulous for scooping and turning out IDENTICAL sized meringues.

I make them days ahead, and dip the flat bottom of each one in dark melted chocolate....let that set and then sandwich them with cream
OR no chocolate, slather each half with whipped cream, and hide a dod of lemon curd in a dip , sandwich together.

Brown sugar meringues are also very nice, but if you are wary then I would go with normal, the heavier sugar is apt to make them more wilful

The best afternoon tea I've been too served a refreshing sorbet for between the savoury and sweet courses. Cleansed the palate nicely.

Also I'd offer a glass of fizz to start with, then tea and then I'd offer a nice cocktail afterwards for those that stay after the afternoon tea.

I like your idea of quiche and veg sticks as often there is too much sweet and not enough savoury. Also I like your fruit platter idea as often afternoon tea is very heavy and unhealthy.

OMG - the magic oven actually has a 'dehydrate' setting - this could be the saving of my meringues. They so often turn out too damp/chewy.

Then I can use the egg yolks for lemon curd.

I could do mini meringue nests with whipped cream & lemon curd. They'd prob need a coat of chocolate (white or dark?) before adding the cream and curd. Would that work?

Can you get hold of minced pork? It's perfectly possible to make good sausage meat with pork mince, herbs and spices. When we kept pigs this is what we did.

What about some Jan tarts?
The cream and jam could be in the little paper dishes, they use for sauce in the USA.
MIL had never had shortbread in USA.

What about scotch eggs?
You could make an amazing hunters pie.
My mum makes a great chocolate Guinness cake it's really moist.

We used to make savoury pin wheel biscuits - roll out a pack of puff pastry into a large rectangle, spread a thin layer of ketchup, sprinkle with finely grated cheese, a sprinkle of a few mixed herbs or thyme, then roll up and chill for a couple of hours. Then slice into thin rounds 1cm maximum, bit less if you want to be dainty. Put on a baking tray, well spaced and bake, watching carefully.

They are really simple but a nice savoury addition to afternoon tea that taste better than their recipe suggests! And as you like baking you’d be able to tweak the recipe to pimp them up with whatever nice cheese or sauce you have (feta and pesto is nice for example).

Similar to a quiche is a tortilla (Spanish style rather than Mexican!). You can either do a big one cut up in cubes or make them in mini muffin cases and they don’t crumble as much as pastry can...

If you’re thinking of meringue then consider a pavlova - the lovely marshmallowy bottom is much nicer than a mouthful of dusty meringue (ok so I might be biased but when I’ve been at things that have both, the pavlova runs out much faster).

A fruitcake or a big Bakewell tart? Do they have Bakewell tarts there? Very British.

Bakewell tarts mmmmmm

Could do Marmite pinwheels. Loved those as a kid. Not sure how popular they'd be. Marmite can be a bit marmite, can't it?

You could do just a few marmite - Parkin's a good British cake too. Do they have that there?

I think I'll try making a few lemon fondant fancies this afternoon, just to get some practice in.

Sounds like a great reason to do marmite pinwheels They'll be a great talking point and if they don't like them, there will plenty left over for you to nibble at for the week or two afterwards!

My mother used to make little savoury cheesey biscuit 'thins' - that basically seemed to be finely grated parmesan and gruyere mixed up with a bit of flour and dolloped on a baking sheet. The fat from the cheese acts as the fat in the biscuit, they spread out and are just sort of cheesy crispy wafer things that are nice to go with savoury bits and bobs.

The other thing she used to do instead of making pasty cases for things was to make little cases out of sliced bread - you flattened the bread wtih a rolling pin, buttered the bread, cut out circles to fit in jam tart/muffin tins, put another in in top to help press them down during cooking and then cook - they'd go all crispy and tasty and then would also be good to use like you'd use little pastry cases.