There may be a new King in Great Britain and the rest of the Commonwealth, but when it comes to Mother’s Day, moms are the indisputable queens of the day.
Brunch, although lovely, is a timeworn tradition filled with a lot of hubbub and not enough time for sleeping in or the quiet, leisurely morning most moms crave.
However, there are other delicious ways to honor Mom, as I discovered — by accident — on a trip to London last year. Every tearoom and hotel tea service was booked solid the day before Mother’s Day, which in the U.K. is the last Sunday in March.
What better way to treat Mom like royalty or to celebrate with your best mom-mates than with a proper British tea?
Santa Rosa’s Tudor Rose English Tea Room was always popular, but with its closing last year, people have had to look elsewhere.
Patisserie Angelica in Sebastopol, known for its exquisite wedding and special-occasion cakes, has quietly offered a tea service for quite some time.
Owner Gergana Karabelov, who took over the bakery from Condra Easley and Deborah Morris at the end of 2018, said the two had started a West County High Tea service but only offered it on special days, like Christmas and Mother’s Day.
Fast-forward to the start of the pandemic, when the market for wedding cakes was nonexistent. Karabelov began offering to-go boxes for at-home tea parties.
Now she’s back to offering in-person tea service every day the bakery is open, with all the pomp and circumstance teatime deserves: a table set with a fancy floral tablecloth, a teapot and cups, a vase of flowers and a tiered serving tray teeming with dainty sweets and savory treats.
There’s also the tea, of course, which Karabelov orders from Mariage Frères in Paris. Guests can choose from more than a dozen teas, including her favorite, the Black Orchid, a smooth black tea rounded out with hints of vanilla.
“You have to steep it for the right amount of time to be really good,” she said. To that end, teapots are delivered with a cute hourglass tea timer.
Before we go much further into putting on a proper tea, we need to set the record straight about the term “high tea,” which is a misnomer.
Tea terminology
According to “The Oxford Companion to Food,” “high tea” is a “substantial late-afternoon or early-evening meal … eaten on arrival home from work.” It consists of things like ham or cold cuts, meat pies, pickles and breads or cakes. It’s distinguished from the “lighter, more elegant afternoon tea,” which is “considered an indicator of a leisured, comfortable existence.”
Then there’s cream tea, a scaled-down teatime tradition Patisserie Angelica also offers.
“Cream tea is just your choice of tea, your scone and a sauce, no sweets or savories,” Karabelov said.
Now that we have our tea terminology sorted out (your British friends will thank you), what exactly goes into a proper afternoon tea?
While tea is the obligatory drink for the occasion, many fancy tea rooms in London also offer an optional glass of Champagne, so feel free to serve sparkling wine of some sort to kick things off.
For Karabelov — who grew up in Bulgaria, where it’s all about “coffee, wine, cheese and yogurt,” she said half-jokingly — tea is a new tradition.
“It’s not very popular in Bulgaria,” she said. “I had to learn about it here. It’s a fun aspect (of owning the bakery).”
Afternoon tea essentials
There are at least two defining elements of afternoon tea, she noted. One is finger sandwiches. The other?
“Definitely the scone and the sauce that goes with it,” she said.
Patisserie Angelica’s scones are unique in that they’re made only with cream. There’s no butter, unlike in many scone recipes.
“The cream makes them crackly on the outside and softer on the inside, and they don’t get dry. I like them better than scones made with butter,” Karabelov said.
The bakery changes the flavors of the scones often; one afternoon, the tea service included petite blueberry and honey pecan varieties.
When making scones at home, you can dress them up or down, however you like. Plain scones are just fine, too, as they’re served with jam and cream, which add plenty of flavor.
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