My annual tea party looks a bit different this year - my friends and I did a virtual tea party! I am glad we were still able to get together and dress up for our tradition - this is the seventh tea party! One advantage of it being virtual is that we could all make it even though we are not all geographically near each other.
I also spent much less time making food and decorating (since it was just me), but I figured that if I was going to do all my tea party cooking and baking, I wanted to be able to enjoy it for more than one meal, so I made this blog post a “tea for two”! The two people are current me and future me! Future me is excited to eat the second half of my creation later in the week. I also thought a “tea for two” post would be more useful for you, since this way you can follow the recipes and amounts to make a tea for two for a little at-home tea date!
I always have similar spread categories: open-faced tea sandwiches (aka fancy little toasts), a salad of some sort, and a dessert spread including a berry cake and something chocolatey. I like to switch up the toast toppings and desserts, except every year I have always made a berry shortcake. This year I made a mini cake because it is just me at my party, but I still wanted to have the tradition of the berry shortcake. This year pretty much everything was plant-based, except for the Greek yogurt on one of my tea toasts! I of course served English tea with everything as well, from my teapot.
I chose to mostly use recipes from some of my favorite Black food bloggers to support and highlight their awesome recipes! So I've included the links to their recipes in this post, but I’ll share details about the amount of ingredients for two-ish servings and any substitutions/changes I made. They all have so many great, mostly plant-based recipes, so definitely check out their pages for more.
Click here to learn more about my tea party tradition, here to see my tea party from last year, and here to see a tea party I made for my birthday last year.
Tea Party for Two Recipes
Tea Toasts
For both types of toast, I cut slices of bread in half into triangles and then toasted them before adding toppings. I used 3 slices of bread, so each toast type had 3 toasts.
Greek yogurt and baked lemon garlic zucchini with a garnish of mint leaves
I made Jessica In The Kitchen’s recipe for lemon garlic grilled zucchini, but air-fried the zucchini instead of grilling (because I have never grilled by myself and didn’t think today was the day to start). I air-fried it at 350 F for 20 or so minutes until the zucchini was soft; since I air-fried it, I did not need to add the olive oil and I only used 1 zucchini so I cut the recipe amount in half. You could also bake this in an oven at 350 F; if you do this, you should add olive oil so the zucchini doesn't burn. I spread Greek yogurt on the toasts, then topped it with the baked zucchini, fresh mint leaves, and some lemon zest. It was super fresh and summery tasting!
Pumpkin and roasted carrots with sage leaves
I spread pumpkin purée on the toast, then added roasted carrots and sage leaves. I personally love eating pumpkin all year-round, but if you are looking for a fun fall recipe, this would be a great toast!
Vegan Caprese Salad
I am really excited about this recipe - I think caprese salad is so bright and refreshing and perfect for summer, so I wanted to make a vegan version. I figured that tofu has a similar texture to mozzarella, so I substituted that for mozzarella and it worked great! It of course doesn’t taste exactly the same, but it is a delicious salad. I seasoned the tofu with lemon juice and garlic because I wanted it to have flavor, but be fairly neutral to go with the other flavors. You could do a different seasoning of your choice, or maybe add some black pepper.
I used cherry tomatoes because that is what I had at home, but you could also use full-sized tomatoes and cut them in slices. I also added some cucumber slices, even though that isn’t traditionally in a caprese salad, but it paired well with the flavor and texture.
Ingredients
½ block extra firm tofu
2-3 tbsp lemon juice
About 1 tsp minced garlic
8-10 cherry tomatoes
2-25 leaves of basil
¼ cucumber
2-3 tbsp balsamic vinegar
Steps
1. Cut tofu into pieces that are about an inch or so long, and toss with lemon juice and garlic.
2. Air fry the tofu at 350 F for 10-15 minutes, shaking the tray every so often, until the edges are slightly golden.
3. Slice tomatoes and cucumbers - I sliced the cherry tomatoes in half, and the cucumbers in half or quarters.
4. Rinse and dry basil leaves.
5. Toss everything together, then drizzle balsamic vinegar over the top. Enjoy!
Desserts
Miniature heart-shaped berry vanilla cake
Like I mentioned earlier, I always have a cake with berries and this year I used the vegan Vanilla Cupcakes recipe from Make It Dairy Free! I adjusted the recipe for the amount of 5 cupcakes - they have a handy tool on their page that automatically adjusts the ingredient amounts for you when you put in the number of treats you want to make. I poured the batter into two small heart-shaped springform pans, then stacked the cakes, drizzled peanut butter over it, and added berries. I just put Greek yogurt in between the cake layers, because I ran out of time to make any sort of frosting, but Make It Dairy Free has lots of great vegan frosting recipes
The modifications I made were: using oat milk and oat flour (just blend up oats), olive oil instead of coconut, and adding ½ tbsp cinnamon.
Cinnamon Banana Scones
You can’t have a tea party without scones, so I made these Cinnamon Banana scones from Orchids and Sweet Tea! These are so simple to make and taste like banana bread in a scone form. I also used the automatic ingredient conversion tool to scale the recipe for 5 scones. The only modification I made is that I didn’t have any raisins to add; the original recipe is Cinnamon Raisin Banana scones, but mine were consequently just Cinnamon Banana - but still delicious! I used oat flour and oat milk for this as well. P.S. Shanika from Orchids and Sweet Tea is doing a live Zoom Vegan Mac and Cheese cooking class this Saturday evening (sign up here)! I am going, and I'm excited!!
Citrus Chocolate Truffles with Orange Zest
I love chocolate so I had to include something chocolatey in my dessert spread! To make things a bit more fancy and summery, I chose this Citrus Chocolate Truffle recipe from Sweet Potato Soul. When I bit into it, I actually remembered having a chocolate orange dessert called a tiffin when I went to London when I was 15 (I went for a Girl Scout program). I had forgotten about that dessert, but tasting this truffle was so similar and delicious and brought back fun memories - especially appropriate for a British tea party! I loved this recipe - it is so easy to make and only needs a few simple ingredients and the orange flavor adds a great zing. I didn’t add the Vitamin C powder she used because I don’t have that, but I added ½ tsp of pure orange extract to the date-pecan filling to enhance the orange flavor.
*Clinks teacup* Cheers! I hope you try some of these recipes and enjoy with a nice cup of tea!