Afternoon tea

Jac used white and multigrain bread to make three different kinds of sandwiches – hard-boiled egg and lettuce; cucumber dipped in apple cider vinegar and seasoned with salt and pepper; and her favourite, smoked salmon, thinly sliced red onion, chopped capers and cream cheese.

If Jac was chef in the kitchen, I was the apprentice, helping with small tasks whenever needed. It’s not that I didn’t want to do more – I think Jac was having too much fun and didn’t actually want much help! So anyway, once the sandwiches were made I arranged them on a tray while Jac moved on to another task.

Jac then used smoked meats we bought at the Good Food and Wine Show Perth to make a selection of three “gourmet” sandwiches: smoked emu with mild English mustard; smoked kangaroo with Swiss cheese; and smoked chicken breast with lettuce and Beerenberg tomato chutney.

She chose a recipe to try out of the Australian Women’s Weekly BAKE book – spiced coffee cupcakes. While the cakes cooled, I followed made the icing. You start off with a butter and icing sugar base, then divide it into two bowls to create two different icings – coffee and chocolate. It was a cold day and the atmospheric temperature meant the icing wouldn’t stay soft/liquid enough to drizzle as per the recipe instruction, so we simply spread it on top of the little cakes. Both icings were really nice, buttery, flavoursome and not too sweet. The coffee icing was made with ground coffee and the chocolate icing included cardamom. I was a little worried initially that the cardamom flavour would be too strong but you couldn’t taste it at all – the chocolate icing was delicious!

Jac also bought pastry tart shells and made custard filling for them. She sprinkled ground nutmeg on top of each tart.

She baked a batch of triple choc cookies using the fridge cookie dough we bought as part of a fundraiser for her niece’s school. They have dark and white chocolate chips on them. I find the cookies too sweet, but everyone else who’s tried them loves them.

Jac pre-ordered a selection of pastries at La Galette De France patisserie (Shop 3, 25 Mends Street, South Perth), including some lovely mini strawberry tarts.

She got some of the pear tarts I enjoyed so much the last time, as well as berry, peach, and almond and cherry ones.

But the most popular of the pastries were the gorgeous lemon curd tarts, each topped with a tiny wedge of fresh lime. The lemon filling was lusciously tangy and creamy.

Our friend D brought along a dish of nibblies – sliced cabana sausage, sweet gherkin pickles, black pepper crackers and Camembert cheese. I love the combination of salty sausage and sweet pickle on a cracker.

Jac’s mum made lovely iced carrot cake.

Jac’s mum’s friend E brought homemade spring rolls. They were really tasty! I ate four spring rolls at afternoon tea.

E also made sausage rolls, which everybody loved. Savoury pastries, sweet pastries, I just loved this afternoon tea! Jac would’ve been perfectly content with a stack of the smoked salmon sandwiches. :)

It was quite a feast!