A Civilised Hen Party... At Their Lovely Cambridgeshire Family Home

Last weekend I was witness and host to the loveliest & most civilised Hen party I have ever been part of, I was very lucky to be involved and I had a great time helping out to make this memorable for the gorgeous bride-to-be.

Emma, the sister of the bride has been to one of my events previously and she is such a sweetie for asking me to help host her sisters’ surprise Hen party at their home in the gorgeous Cambridgeshire Countryside. Of course, I said yes, it was going to be a first for me in going to my guests home, rather than them coming to me, so exciting.

The original idea was to hold it in their stunning garden and orchard, however with the changeable weather (This IS England, of course it was threatening rain, when isn’t it?!) so we set up in their gorgeous kitchen and dining room instead, which gave me huge house envy, I must admit.

With the bunting up and the table set up in a buffet style with mis-matching teacups & saucers, side plates, cutlery and of course the food itself, it looked great and I was chuffed to bits with the way the afternoon panned out.

The Hen knew she was having a tea party, but she didn’t know she was going to be pampered just as much as she was hehe. She enjoyed sipping out of the lovely teacup she had made to commemorate this afternoon along with my delicious layer cakes, including my Tuck Shop Cake and a Lemon & Blueberry Layer Cake as well as my home made fruit & spice scones, served warm from their very own Aga. It was a kitchen dream for me and I loved every minute of it. 

I was able to stand back and let the lovely ladies spoil the lovely Steph, whilst I was on hand in the background to serve loose leaf tea whenever they needed me. 

Plus, that way I got to people watch and see just how lucky this lovely lady is in her loving friends and family and some of my very youngest tea party guests hehe. The little lady with the prettiest outfit and huge white flower in her hair was snoozing in the land of cake fairies after a few bites of my tasty treats, awww so cute!

I was also mightily impressed by the gorgeous gifts they had bought from a lovely local lady who makes stunning personalised crockery and wrapped up a lovely cake stand and a commemorative plate with a pen for everybody to sign and then fire at home for her to keep as a gift. I may well get one myself for The Secluded Tea Party one of these days, such a great idea!

So, with practice, means I now have the hen tea party bug!... For any need of a civilised celebration, just drop me a line, I would be more than happy to have a chat. 

You can book a Hen Party Afternoon Tea or Tea Party in Cambridge or in any location you wish, either at home, a venue of your choice or one of our chosen afternoon tea venues, no matter how many guests you have we can cater for 3 to 30 guests onwards, so just email Miss Sue Flay for all your Hen Tea Party needs. 

cake@secludedteaparty.com 

But most importantly - Steph, congratulations and Good Luck for your big day! xxx

Miss Sue Flay 

x

Hunt & Darton Pop-Up Cafe - Cambridge

I honestly can't resist sharing this with you all. 

It was only last week I saw my lovely friend, Deepa (also known as lazy Giraffe hehe) had been saying that Cambridge needed a new pop-up restaurant or a tearoom or a new underground foodie location and I then went home, flicked through the latest edition of the Cambridgeshire Journal magazine and saw just the ticket...

Not only do we have the fabulous Scrimshaws Supperclub, A Saucepan & A Suitcase and the upcoming Plate Lickers Anonymous...

Cambridge is now home to Hunt & Darton, a pop-up cafe in the very heart of Cambridge City Centre, well, for the next few weeks anyway!...

Hunt & Darton Cafe is the brainchild of local and arty duo, Jenny Hunt and Holly Darton, where they intend to incorporate live art within a cafe, based on Regent Street no less.

From the moment you walk in, you will be chuckling, it’s Random with a capital R... Salt & Pepper on the tables, resting on Action Men dressed as Barbies, Pineapples on the table tops as decoration, a customer tally on the huge blackboard on one wall (Of which you are asked to chalk yourself onto to help them keep track of how many customers they attract... Some dogs are even mentioned on this tally....!) as well as an openly public loss and profit count on the wall for all to see, actually telling you how much they make on anything from their Roast Dinner Sandwich to a cup of tea a Wagon Wheel.

On sitting at our table we were greeted with a friendly waiter with a name tag "Low Profile"... We weren't sure what to make of the polo he offered each of us before we ordered, but we naturally became traditionally British and accepted and proceeded to suck the mints prior to our coffee and tea course haha.... We didn't question this at the time, but suddenly thought about the logic a day or two afterwards : ) 

Our Roast dinner sandwiches were interesting to say the least, we had expected them to be hot but on arrival, they were indeed cold meat and vegetables with all the trimmings in between 3 lovely layers of fresh bread. I went for the Roast beef with Parsnips, Carrots, Stuffing and even some Gravy and Horseradish mixed in there and it was filling and not too bad for £4. The mister had a Roast Chicken & Cranberry Roast dinner sandwich and it was lovely and sweet and more up my street as a cold sarnie, but the concept was great, being that was initially had us fancying a trip there to give these badboys a go. 

We weren't disappointed, we chuckled all the way through and enjoyed flicking through their specially made paper to browse through with more and more random musings and articles. We were entertained all the way through our visit. 

The amusing menu on the table tells you how to take tea properly (don't tap your spoon on the side of your tea cup don't you know?!) with etiquette that you could in fact learn at our very own Secluded Tea Party & Etiquette lesson coming up in September. 

But what is great about this is that on the other side of the menu it tells you to go completely against these manners and just simply play with your food... Titled "How to Play With Your Food", you can order a slice of Battenburg and are advised to Uncouple the pink and yellow sponge and reassemble in the form of a model castle. 

Or try ordering a Tunnocks Teacake and roll up the foil wrapper into a ball and throw it in each others mugs (the mister didn't wait for me to finish my tea so I got a little wetter than planned... hmmm). 

If you like trying new experiences and you like playing with your food, this is the place for you to try out!

Hunt & Darton Cafe is at 100 Regent Street in Cambridge until 27th May, so get your bum down there and support this project, it's so much fun. 

And if you get hooked, you can go back again and again and after 4 trips with stamps on your loyalty card, you get a special treat... Oooh intriguing!

Even each till receipt is a piece of art in it's own right, with each one being completely unique. It could be worth money one day, you never know hehe... I loved it and I am so glad we took a visit. 

We were kids for an hour or so and enjoyed making boobies out of pieces of Battenburg and flicked our Tunnocks wrappers at each other... where else will ever let you do that as a "Done" thing to do with your cuppa?!... Enough said ; ) 

100 Regent Street (Opposite De Luca Restaurant) 

Cambridge

CB2 1DP

http://liveartcollectiveeast.com/hunt-darton-cafe

Wednesday - Sunday 

10am to 6pm 

Miss Sue Flay 

x

"The Tea Cosy" - Our New Mini & Secret Afternoon Tea Room

After many enquiries asking for smaller, more intimate afternoon tea parties, I am very excited to be announcing a new and very homely afternoon tea venue in Cambridge, or somewhere close to our City... for a Cambridgeshire retreat with a difference.. and free parking too – a real perk in our here region!

Introducing... The Tea Cosy

The perfect afternoon tea location for bookings from simply 2 to 5 people.

It’s your very own private tea room for 2 entire hours, with an entirely new Secluded Tea Party menu for each date listed below.

You will be able to book The Tea Cosy with Miss Sue Flay as your own personal tea hostess for the afternoon, whilst you get to sit back, lounge around, read a book, get to blogging or writing that important post or chapter you have been promising yourself you would complete, chat with your friends or family or even grab the chance to sit back and watch a film or a few episodes of your favourite box set should you prefer.

You can treat the Tea cosy as your own personal space and peace & quiet for the entire time you are there, enjoying the coffee table books and films provided, be it a girly chick flick you fancy indulging in, or a horror or indie film should you prefer something a little edgier with your afternoon tea or even bring your own if you would prefer.

Alternatively, you can simply have some relaxing background music on whilst you natter and nibble away to your heart’s content.

You won’t annoy anybody with your antics, it’s just you and your fellow afternoon tea guest/s for a full homemade afternoon tea menu and a vast selection of tea and coffee to order. Equally, you won’t be annoyed by children running around you or other afternoon tea guests listening in on your conversations, it’s just you and your own people here : )

It’s the perfect secluded venue for couples or for a date, perhaps even for a unique & romantic proposal, friends & family wanting to catch up, small civilised hen parties or birthday celebrations, “Ladies Wot Do Lunch”, men who want to indulge at lunch, or Just because you fancy a good old gossip in your own space for an hour or two..

There is plenty on the menu, to include finger sandwiches, homemade cakes & sweet treats, scones with all the trimmings and much more besides. Each menu is £25 per person (minimum is 2, maximum is 5) and will be different for each of the dates below. What doesn’t get eaten, you will take home with you to enjoy later on.

Whatever the reason, just email Miss Sue Flay at cake@secludedteaparty.com to secure & book your time slot from the dates & times below and tell her why you think you deserve to secure The Tea cosy for the afternoon.

On booking, you will receive details of its secret location and the appropriate etiquette for your visit.

The dates and times below are the only ones currently on offer, so get in quick to sample an entirely new & exciting venue and menu (Subject to change if I burn something along the way hehe).. Some evenings may be available, subject to a chat via email in the first instance... Just get in touch.  

Saturday 19^th May 2012  - £25 per person

12noon – 2pm – Available

3:30pm – 5:30pm – Available

MENU:

Finger Sandwiches, Including:

Cucumber, Cream Cheese & Mint

Free Range Egg Mayonnaise & Cress

Ham & Garlic Jam

***

Choice of Scones, from either:

Sweet Fruit & Spice Scones with Clotted Cream & Locally Sourced Preserves

Or Savoury Cheese Scones with a selection of herb butters

***

Selection of Cakes & Sweets:

Fruit & Chocolate Tarts with Vanilla Creme Patisserie 

Gorgeous Raspberry Coulis & Chocolate Cream Meringues

Teacup Trifles

***

Unlimited Tea & Coffee Selection

Tuesday 5^th June 2012    (Bank Holiday for Jubilee)  - £25 per person

12noon – 2pm – Available

3:30pm – 5:30pm – Available

MENU:

Finger Sandwiches, Including:

Red Leicester & Spring Onion

Smoked Salmon & Cream Cheese

Ham & Garlic Jam

***

Choice of Scones, from either:

Sweet Fruit & Spice Scones with Clotted Cream & Locally Sourced Preserves

Or Savoury Cheese Scones with a selection of herb butters

***

Selection of Cakes & Sweets:

Warm Blondies, served with Fresh Strawberries & Cream

Banana Split Bites

Nutella Teacup Cheesecakes

***

Unlimited Tea & Coffee Selection

Sunday 17^th June 2012   (Fathers Day) - £25 per person

12noon – 2pm – Available

3:30pm – 5:30pm – Available

MENU:

Finger Sandwiches, Including:

Cucumber, Cream Cheese & Mint

Free Range Egg Mayonnaise & Cress

Ham & Garlic Jam

***

Choice of Scones, from either:

Sweet Fruit & Spice Scones with Clotted Cream & Locally Sourced Preserves

Or Savoury Cheese Scones with a selection of herb butters

***

Selection of Cakes & Sweets:

Fruit Tartlet Bar, with Fresh Fruit & Crème Patisserie

Oreo Cookies & Cream Truffle Selection

Peanut Butter Mousse & Meringue Dipping Kisses

***

Unlimited Tea & Coffee Selection

Saturday 30^th June 2012    - £25 per person

12noon – 2pm – Available

3:30pm – 5:30pm – Available

MENU:

Finger Sandwiches, Including:

Red Leicester & Spring Onion

Smoked Salmon & Cream Cheese

Ham & Garlic Jam

***

Choice of Scones, from either:

Sweet Fruit & Spice Scones with Clotted Cream & Locally Sourced Preserves

Or Savoury Cheese Scones with a selection of herb butters

***

Selection of Cakes & Sweets:

Chocolate Ganache & Raspberry Cake

Ritz Torte

Strawberry Shortcake Popsicles

***

Unlimited Tea & Coffee Selection

And I hope from here, you are salivating as much as I was making up these menus... and do get in touch to book your slot before it goes to somebody else  : )

Miss Sue Flay

x

A Cake & Geek Fix with Cambridge Folk Museum - The Full Story

On Sunday 29^th April, on a very rainy afternoon, I could be found in a very secret and secluded city location in Cambridge, just to make a refreshing change to the usual clean countryside air that I am usually enjoying... hehe.

The Folk Museum in Cambridge is a local treasure that often gets forgotten by us all, but is also host to a gorgeous  vintage tea room which opens most Saturdays throughout the year. The museum is run by two equally fantastically enthusiastic treasures in the form of Tamsin Wimhurst and Susan Miller who were great fun to work alongside for this particular afternoon tea. These lovely ladies are hilarious and it was great fun reading up on cake history before the event in order for us to plan the cake menu to go with Tamsins' educational yet amusing talk on the calendar year and the cake traditions it has offered over the years. 

Now, my old school friends will know that my History teacher and I never saw eye to eye and I ended up being quite the trouble maker in this particular lesson at school. So I deserve the grade that I received for GCSE History and I do find it very difficult to feedback History that I learn, however I was on hand to do what I do best as a hostess and make tea and coffee for my chilly guests and help warm their cockles on such a typical April day in the UK, including a couple of my lovely American guests who had joined us to learn a few stories whilst here in Cambridge. 

Credit has to go to Tamsin and Susan for entertaining us and allowing my guests to explore the Folk museum with a tailor made trail that each guest was provided with to nosey at the exhibits relating to our cake-based talk, including a loaf of sugar that they currently have on display as well as a 19th century food processor and an apple corer and peeler. They also had Salamanders (A press put into the fire until red hot to brown the top of cooked meat or baked items), wooden storage barrels for flour, Queen Mary's Tea Caddy which was presented to the museum as a gift when she visited in 1937 as well as Queen Victoria's Jubilee Crockery.  

Cambridge is not steeped in masses of Cake-based history itself, not from what we can find anyway, however we do know that the Giggle Cake is said to stem from the Fens (a boiled fruit cake using cherries and pineapple) and the elusive Cambridge Cheese is also said to be a food that has lost it's history, so should anybody know about this soft cheese, please do come forward, we would LOVE to pick your brains. 

So, starting in January and the New Year, Tamsin educated us all on Plum Cake for Winter Solstice, of which used to be made with a hole in the centre for the baker to place on the horn of an ox. The ox would then throw the cake off and if it landed in front of the ox you would have good luck for the rest of the year! If it landed beside the ox, behind it, well... no luck for you (Which would have been myself included ; ) 

We learnt about many cakes and their fun stories that go with them, for example: 

St Agnes Feast, where it was traditional to bake Dumb Cake. A doughy bread meant to be eaten and then the girl must walk backwards and jump into bed... this was meant to make the eater dream of their future spouse!

Hot Cross Buns (The boys in Cambridge used to shout "Hot Cross Buns, Hot Cross Buns, Full of Sugar, Full of Butter & lots of plums" - Plums, meaning currants : ) 

Not forgetting Good Friday Skipping, of which used to take place up until the end of the Second World War, including on our very own Parkers Piece in Cambridge. Families would take a picnic and long ropes to jump with, it was said to come from an ancient fertility rite where the men would turn the rope and women would jump over it. Sweets, ice Cream, drinks and toys were sold at these sort of events and it was a real family day out. 

I actually avoided making Hot Cross Buns as we have just passed Easter, however I did make a gorgeous Almond & Marzipan Brioche instead as a smile to these and the...

Simnel Cake, of which was traditionally eaten on the fourth Sunday of Lent, where you could eat all of the forbidden foods in one cake as a one off whilst fasting. It was traditionally eaten on Mothering Sunday, which Tamsin told us was originally named after the day that people would visit their "Mothering" Church, but nowadays is a day to spoil and treat our own mother or mum. 

Tansy, a herbaceous flower and also an ingredient that has long gone out of fashion was used to make Tansy Cake or Tansy Custard, but it seems to have faded during the Victorian era. The Tansy cake was almost like a cheese cake made with a whopping 18 eggs in one recipe that Tamsin had managed to dig up. 

I had mistaken Tamsins' "Cheesecake" research and actually made a chilled Cherry & Chocolate Cheesecake... so not a cake as such, but a welcome choice to my afternoon tea guests all the same hehe. 

May Cakes were eaten traditionally on May Day (A day for celebration of Milk Maids) made with pastry and an almost savoury mince. It seemed to have been a regional recipe and changed from one end of the country to the other, with it being almost like a custard tart further south of the UK. 

We learnt about Whitsun and Gooseberry Tarts or Pies being another delight that seems to have gone out of fashion over the years. 

We found out that Cambridge used to be home to one of the largest fairs in Europe, Stourbridge Fair on the River Cam, which is still celebrated to this day, albeit on a smaller scale nowadays. The food of the fair used to be Gingerbread, fashioned in intricate wooden moulds which moulded the biscuits into shapes of women and men or "Husbands & Wives" which has now been replaced by doughnuts and candy floss as the food of choice in our lifetime. It is said that even William Shakespeare was a fan of Gingerbread and has even quoted it in his work. 

I baked a gorgeous Carrot & Gingerbread Loaf with Orange Cream Cheese frosting as my ode to this sweet treat. 

We also have another great sweet link in Cambridge in the form of Reynolds Fruit Rock, which was made locally and sold on Cambridge Market and at the fairs. It used to take him weeks to prepare for such fairs and make his famous fruit flavoured rock around 1846. The sweet stall on Cambridge market is called "Reynolds" and is linked to Mr Reynolds himself. This made us all smile, we all knew exactly where he is located. 

How about a winter warmer in the form of a "Sheep Shearing Cake"?!... Likened to a fruit tea cake, with currants and no sugar. It was made by farmers and their wives at Sheep Shearing season, the better the cake tasted, the more memorable their farm was...

All Souls Eve would be where the poor of the village would beg for cake, this sweet gift was also known as the "Dole" and this is where the term "On the dole" is said to come from. Soul cakes were flavoured with caraway seeds and I actually made these in the shape of teapots for my guests to nibble on with their cuppa to see how they tasted, they weren't bad at all. 

St. Clements Day was a day celebrating Black Smiths, but also bakers later on. In 1837 Cambridge hosted it's very own sit down meal to celebrate local bakers on Parkers Piece, where everything was planned and set up within just 2 weeks. Amazingly they baked 4,500 2lb loaves and boiled 1,608 Plum Puddings for the diners. Now that was a feast worth going to!... I wonder if you could easily recreate such an event now?!

We learnt so much more, I could be here all day, so thank you lovely ladies of the Folk Museum and I am so very much looking forwarding to our next event together on:

Sunday 1st July at 3pm

with a talk titled "From Tea Parties to Tea Rooms"...

More info to follow on the blog very shortly, so do keep your eyes peeled!

And thank you to all of my fabulous guests for joining us, some of which have blogged about this event, so I have linked them below for you to read up on their experiences of our afternoon tea party: 

Maria at Sudden Flashes of Inspiration 

Simone at The 1930's House 

And my full Photo Album from this event 

And don't forget to take a visit to The Cambridge Folk Museum! 

And lastly, a recipe that Tamsin would like to share with you all and which made us all chuckle and gasp at certain elements of this great bake!

Do let us know if you attempt bake it yourself and how you find it to eat, we would love to hear about it. 

Epiphany cake recipe  

- "Mrs. Goodfellow's Cookery As It Should Be“ 1865.

Twelfth Night Cake Recipe Directions:Cream two pounds of butter and two pounds of sifted loaf sugar; take one large nutmeg grated, half an ounce of ground allspice, one teaspoonful of ground cinnamon, the same of ginger, the same of coriander seeds, and one wineglass of brandy; mix these well, then beat very light eighteen eggs; cut into thin slices half a pound of citron, and the grated rind of two lemons; beat this for at least half an hour until perfectly light; line the pan with buttered white paper, and bake in rather slow heat for four hours: when nearly cold, ice it as directed.

Recipe found at:  http://www.homemade-dessert-recipes.com/twelfth-night-cake-recipes.html

Miss Sue Flay 

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