Mother's Day Afternoon Tea

I know you've just been dying to see this (yeah right! Edge of your seat sorta stuff I'm doing here!)

Whilst I finished the sweet side of the afternoon tea my sisters made the triangle sandwiches.  Using thin sliced white bread they cut the crusts off, buttered the bread and filled the sandwiches with:

• cream cheese and cucumber
• ham and Bulldog Mustard (a spicy wholegrain mustard made by The East India Company)
• chicken salad
• strong cheddar cheese and Branston Pickle (uber-Bristish condiment)

Traditional afternoon tea usually goes with cucumber finger sandwiches and cress finger sandwiches but really...cress, cucumber?  Who's tastes is that going to satisfy?  Ultimately its your afternoon tea so do what makes you happy.

Separate sandwiches were made for Nan (sans butter) and Posie (ham and cream cheese cut into shapes with cookie cutters) and the table was laid.

Don't you love my mother's salt and pepper shakers in the background...

My little sister also made some banana bread to finish the spread and we gorged on sweet goodies.

Not quite up to the Ritz standard but hey, not a bad effort on my part given everything else I was doing!!  Everybody loved the Lemon Meringue Pie's best but the Scones and the Welsh Cakes went down well too (of course with lashings of clotted cream).

Just to complete the saga though...you might notice that there are only 4 Scones and 5 Welsh Cakes and that I had originally contemplated making 8.  Well I had.  I arrived home from a hen party on the Saturday night at 12.30am.  I was staying at the 'rents as they were babysitting for me and I needed to be up early to get the food all prepped for the Mother's Day feast.  My bro' had waited up to let me in and upon my arrival informed me that my scones were really good.  It took me a few moments to register what he had just said and then I put my head in my hands.