A 70th Birthday Afternoon Tea

One of the disadvantages of having a relatively small kitchen is that if you want to do ambitious cooking, particularly if you want to make its of different things, you have to keep washing up, clearing up and putting things away as you go.

This might also be considered to be one of the big advantages to having a relatively small kitchen!!

On Monday we had 32 people coming to join us for afternoon tea to celebrate The Builder's 70th birthday. 34 people if you include us. Amongst all those people we had to accommodate various allergies, including nuts and strawberries, a visitor with Coeliacs disease and various vegetarians and pescatarians (although mercifully no vegans),  plus we wanted to include some traditional Australian party treats. So I thought quite carefully about the menu, remembering that it was afternoon tea and not lunch that they were all coming for.

A mixture of savoury and sweet then. On Saturday I made up a batch of rough puff pastry, using grated butter, plain flour and sour cream and left that to sit wrapped in plastic in the fridge until Sunday morning. I also made up a pasty mix of diced potatoes, finely sliced leeks, a little garlic and a very healthy glug of tomato paste which I simmered until not quite done; some pork and sage sausage meat; and a saucepan of minced beef and tomato pie mix. All of these also got left in the fridge overnight so the flavours could mingle.

For the sweet side of the table I made some chocolate and some lemon curd cupcakes from Love Bakery by Samantha Blears which I later iced and decorated and for the gluten free amongst us I made some small meringues, which I filled with whipped cream and caramelised pineapple or kiwifruit slices and grated chocolate. I also made a sponge cake. The Builder is allergic to strawberries - and it was his birthday so it seemed a tad unreasonable to decorate his cake with them - so I used blueberries instead, making a soft blueberry jam for the middle and decorating the top with whipped cream and whole blueberries.

Birthday cupcake treats

The Birthday Boy loves pineapple

But to my mind kiwifruit is more traditional

Blueberry sponge cake

On Monday morning I got up early and made onigiri style rice balls, with cucumber marinated in gluten free soya sauce (which to my surprise I found in the supermarket) and a little brown sugar, or with avocado in the middle. I also made egg and cress, veggie friendly cheese and salmon sandwiches and a small plate of fairy bread (buttered white bread with hundreds and thousands sprinkled on). Then when the visitors were nearly due I made up the potato and cheese pasties, the sausage rolls and the party pies and popped them in the oven for around half an hour. We cut up some celery and carrot stick, and sliced the left over avocados, made sure there was wine and soft drink and tea and coffee and we were ready

A vegetarian platter

Onigiri style rice balls and party sausage rolls and pies in the background

These were filled with avocado slices

My only problem was, that with all the clearing, cleaning, tidying and washing up that had to go on to get all this done in my kitchen, I  ran out of clean and dry tea towels, I ran out of clean and dry hand towels - and I even ran out of dishcloths!

I think the party went well.  There wasn't much food left at the end!