The post for this week is a little different as there is no recipe to share. It absolutely, positively isn’t because I wasn’t organised to line something up because you know that would never happen… well OK, it does… sometimes.
Instead I am going to share a little bit on how I celebrated my birthday this week under the banner of The Sweet Life. Some of the blogs I follow have a similar thing where they share snippets of their lives with their readers and in the event I do this more, I figured I better have a name for it. Given how the vast majority of the recipes on this blog are sweet, I decided to go with The Sweet Life especially after a very charming French pastry chef wrote these three words in my friends cook book as he signed it (I left mine at home that day so didn’t get an autograph myself… oh well).
So let’s get started with episode one.
Despite loving the whole concept of high tea and writing a little series of posts after I bought my new stand, I have never been to a high tea. Shocking, I know. I thought my 30th birthday was as good as time as any to partake in the dainty deliciousness so the hubby and I set off to the Blue Mountains on the hunt. Well, it wasn’t really a hunt as we had made a reservation.
Our adventure took us to Lilianfels in Katoomba and after parking the car under some beautiful old trees, this was the view that greeted us.
We made our way to the Lounge and were shown to our seats in amongst the big plush couches and gorgeous furniture looking out to the courtyard.
After the very friendly host took our order we sat back and took in the surrounds as it was such a beautiful room. It wasn’t long before our high tea arrived and as I mentioned my vegetarianism my sandwiches came out on a separate plate.
From the bottom up:
My sandwiches were egg and rocket, cheese and tomato and (my favourite) char grilled vegetables.
The hubby had egg and rocket as well, turkey and cranberry as well as salami, cucumber and tomato relish.
Next up were the scones, two plain and two fruit, with delicious jam and that smooth as silk clotted cream.
Now I love a good scone and the cream that goes with said scone is a very important factor. When we were on our honeymoon in Tasmania a couple of years ago we stayed in Sheffield for a few days and one afternoon we visited the Highlander Restaurant and Scottish Scone Shop. The hubby ordered some tea, an iced chocolate for me and a couple of plain scones with jam and cream.
Now I am pretty sure that the cream there was King Island double cream (but please correct me if I am wrong) rather than clotted cream as someone suggested and it was even used on my iced chocolate, not the cream in a can, which has never happened before in my life. Needless to say, every iced chocolate I have had since then has paled in comparison.
Given you can’t really buy clotted cream where I live, I did attempt to make my own one day in the slow cooker but it was the most epic of failures. I haven’t attempted it again, but now I have tried the stuff at Lilianfels I might give it another go.
But I digress. The final tier on the high tea stand contained the sweets. There was panna cotta with berry compote, apple and cinnamon friands, fancy jam drops and a chocolate swirl cake.
As we happened to mention we were there for my birthday, shortly after another plate came out with a couple of extra sweets and Happy Birthday written across the plate. It was a very nice surprise that’s for sure.
So we started to work our way through all of this deliciousness but unfortunately we just could not eat it all.
We headed off after a little rest to let the high tea settle and I am glad we parked down the hill as we really needed that walk. Afterwards we headed off to buy some pies from Mountain High Pies to take home and put in the freezer, as well as our favourite Italian Pane bread from the Bakehouse on Wentworth. Obviously the day was all about yummy food which is just how I like it.
Last night we headed to my parents place for dinner and mum made me a birthday cake. Mum did say that she wanted to make me a handbag cake (I have many many handbags in my possession), but it didn’t quite come together. But the cake that she made in the end was quite delicious.
‘Twas a chocolate cake filled with strawberries and fresh cream. Yum yum!
For the final day of my birthday celebrations, I’m milking it for all that it is worth but the hubby isn’t buying “it’s my birthday so you have to ….” anymore, I am off to lunch with my bestie and I can’t wait!