Raspberry and White Chocolate Scones

by Helen Kain | Feb 9, 2022 | Bread & Scones, Desserts, Mother's Day, Tea, Valentine's Day, Winter Recipes

Raspberries are intensely flavourful, but their fragility makes them a tricky fruit to employ in baking scones, Too often they shatter into seeds, and the oozing juice leaves a stained mess. In this recipe, the dough is rolled into a rectangle, then fresh berries and...

Red Currant Cream Cheese Tea Sandwiches

by Helen Kain | Feb 9, 2022 | Bread & Scones, Tea, Valentine's Day, Winter Recipes

Boston Brown bread is the traditional accompaniment to baked beans, but it’s equally delicious with smoked salmon or tangy cream cheese. We’ve made Valentine’s Day Tea sandwiches with heart cut-outs featuring red-currant flavoured cream cheese. ...

Hearts and Flowers for a Valentine’s Day Tea

by Helen Kain | Feb 9, 2022 | Tea, Valentine's Day, Winter Tablescapes

This table started with the Victorian Valentine Tea Cakes, for which I take no credit; they’re available from Ginger Lily Sweets on Etsy. Aren’t they lovely? Made from Springerle moulds, the little cakes are coated with a thin layer of crisp frosting,...

Edith Holden—Illustrator, Naturalist and Edwardian Lady

by Helen Kain | Jan 31, 2022 | Books, Recent, Tea, Vintage china, Winter Tablescapes

Best known in her own time as an illustrator of children’s books, Edith Holden was a keen observer of nature in all its beauty. The publication Nature Notes of an Edwardian Lady is Edith Holden’s journal for 1905. Throughout the year, she jotted down her...

The Answer is Tea

by Helen Kain | Nov 23, 2020 | Brown, Fall Tablescapes, Green, Grey and Pewter, Tea, Vintage china

Have a cuppa? It’s the British cure for whatever ails you and seems particularly apropos in this hustle-bustle week. Whether navigating Thanksgiving preparations, Christmas arrangements, Zooming or Google meeting, it seems everyone is a bit … ahem, testy....

Dried Cherry Panettone

by Helen Kain | Jun 3, 2020 | Bread & Scones, Breakfast, Desserts, Fall Recipes, Spring Recipes, Summer Recipes, Tea, Winter Recipes

I”m a glutton for slightly sweet bread. Not the super-sweet-sticky stuff like iced cinnamon rolls, but scones, date loaf and Portuguese King’s Bread, also called Bolo Rei, a marvellous concoction that Isabel, our cleaning lady, brings every Christmas....