Violets are blue - Valentine's afternoon tea - recipes

This week I'm featuring an afternoon tea suggestion for upcoming Valentines day, which this year is on a Tuesday.

One of the nicest Valentines memories I ever had was when I cooked a lovely meal for the two of us at home, but I did it to a restaurant standard (well my version of a restaurant at home anyway!). You know the kind of thing, I went the extra mile above and beyond what I would normally cook, and we spent a lovely evening relaxing over a three course meal with wine and champagne, the whole works really, (without the bill at the end). It was a really good evening, and its a wonderful memory I will keep forever.

But this year I thought maybe something a bit different. Romantic three course meal, no thank you very much, because this year home baking rules in winning hearts and minds.

So here is my take on a lovely pastel inspired Valentines afternoon tea, for you and your loved one...if you love baking like I do, you might choose to make all of these lovely treats or just make one of them...whichever you choose will be a sure success and well received, because its home made and made with love...and thats just what I would like to receive on Valentines day.

Have a lovely home baked Valentines Day. xxxxx

Rose cupcakes
Choose a cupcake batter mix of your choice and instead of vanilla or lemon (or a similar typical flavour) add a tablespoon of Nielson Massey rosewater to the batter on the final mix. Then when baked and cool, top each cake with a rosewater flavoured butter cream. Make a batch of butter cream, and flavour with Nielson Massey rosewater, rather than adding milk or cream, then divide into three lots and colour two of these one pink and one grape with gel food colouring. Add the coloured and plain butter cream to the cakes with a pallete knife, then finish and decorate with crystalised violet petals (lilac cakes), sugar paste roses/hearts and pearls (cream cakes) and sugar paste geranium flowers (pink cakes).
Lemon & Lavender meringues
I made the amount of meringues here from one large free range egg white. 

I separated an egg white from the yolk and whisked this white until it was foaming, then added 50g of sifted lavender sugar (culinary lavender and sugar stored in a jar), keep beating this until the mixture is stiff and glossy. Add a small amount of grape food colouring and mix just slightly for a subtle marble effect.  Fill a piping bag onto which you have inserted a star nozzle. Pipe onto a lined baking sheet into spirals and bake in a very low oven (140 C fan) for 10 minutes. Turn off the oven and leave the oven door open while the meringues cool. For the filling beat or whisk  a small tub of double cream and add one tablespoon of Silver Spoon lemon icing sugar to the cream and fold in. When the meringues are cold sandwich together with the lemon cream, you can pipe this inside or add with a knife.  To finish dust the top with Silver Spoon lemon icing sugar and add a few flakes of dried culinary lavender to decorate on top of the cream.
Almond sugar biscuits

Soft butter 175g (and it must be unsalted butter to make these) and caster sugar 200g are beaten with 2 large free range eggs and 350g plain flour, 50g ground almonds and a teaspoon each of baking powder and salt to create these lovely light buttery biscuits. Add just a quarter of a teaspoon of Nielson Massey almond essence as you want the flavour to be subtle not overpowering to the mix when you add the beaten eggs. Once you have made the dough and allowed it to rest in the fridge for 30 minutes then use different heart shaped cutters to cut the shapes. Bake these on a lined baking tray for about 8 minutes in a 170C fan oven. When they have baked and cooled decorate as follows:-
Large hearts: decorate with sugar paste coloured grape colour. Pipe with grape gel coloured icing round the edges.
Medium hearts: decorate with icing coloured with grape gel food colouring. Use a smaller heart cutter to encapsulate the wet icing and hold it in a heart shape on the centre of the biscuit.  Once the icing  starts to set remove the cutter.
Dip the very small hearts into Silver Spoon easy melt white chocolate cake topping. Allow to drip dry on a wire cooling rack then top with a lilac sugar paste heart.

 

This blog is not sponsored by Baking Mad, but they sent me and 14 other chosen bloggers some cake decorating related products to try in a Valentines bloggers challenge. We were all sent a range of Silver Spoon and Nielsen Massey items, with the challenge being to make something delicious that we would like to receive on Valentine’s Day using at least 3 of the products sent to us. I chose these four...

You can read all about the bloggers challenge here.

I am also entering this post into two bloggers challenges first Karen and Kate's TeaTime treats where the themes is ROMANCE this month...

AND for Ros and Caroline's ALPHABAKES challenge, which is to blog a recipe from the alphabet from the letter L this month...I am entering my Lemon and Lavender Meringues (from the tea party above)