Valentine’s Tea Party

My friend Gretchen and I thought it would be fun to host a Valentine’s Tea Party for a few of our friends. So we did. And it was fun. I was focused on throwing a fun party rather than on getting good photos. But I did get a few. Thankfully my friends took some photos, too. If you want to throw a tea party for Valentine’s Day, a birthday, a bridal or baby shower, or just because, maybe this will give your some ideas that you can use.

Get Ready

First of all, for our Valentine’s Day theme, we started out with a pink table cloth with hearts to which we added white plates, and some flowers in shades of pink, red and white. My friend Gretchen folded the dark red napkins into heart shapes. Click here to see  a video that shows how.

We served several courses over a period of a few hours. I even printed up a menu.

You might notice that the menu title looks misspelled as Tappy Hour instead of Happy Hour. That’s no mistake. My friends from my fun tap dance workout class occasionally meet for an afternoon “Tappy Hour”.

If you want more details, you can download a .pdf of the valentines-tea-party-menu-plan, and Valentines-tea-party-shopping list.

Most of the food on the menu were purchased pre-prepared from Trader Joe’s. I baked fresh pop-overs during the party, so that they could be served hot from the oven, when they are at their most delicious. I pre-prepared the batter, poured it into the pop-over pan, and had them ready to go into the oven before our guests arrived.

Get Set

Tiered Finger Sandwiches with Garnishes

We made heart shaped and rectangular finger sandwiches and arranged them on three stacked footed plates. I garnished them with heart shaped sweet red peppers, tomatoes and topped it with a carved strawberry rose.

You can see a short video that I added to my blog recently that shows how to make tomato hearts, strawberry roses, and heart shaped sandwiches.

We stumbled upon some fresh pomegranate seeds when shopping at Trader Joe’s for our Valentine’s tea party . We bought them not knowing what we would use them for. But the seeds were so pretty and their color fit our theme. At the last minute we decided to make small heart sandwiches with peanut butter topped with pomegranate seeds. It tasted kind of like peanut butter and jelly. As an alternative, the pomegranate seeds can be layered with cream cheese or mascarpone cheese instead of peanut butter. The white and deep red would be pretty together, and it would taste good, too. In this photo, you can better see the heart shapes of the plum tomatoes on the middle plate.

Desserts

We arranged the petit four cakes on a 3 tiered plate rack and the scones on a footed square plate. We put the chocolate covered dried cherries in a small square glass vase. I used the air hockey table in may family room to hole the desserts until it was time to serve them. It’s not so attractive, and these looked so much prettier on the Valentine’s tea party table setting, but I was too busy enjoying our tea party to take proper photos. We served the citrus scones with lemon curd. Yummy! Again, you can get all of these sweet treats at Trader Joe’s.

You can barely see but each tier of the desserts pictures above had a strawberry carved into a rose in the center. I carved these the same way that I carve beets into roses in my Hearts and Roses video lessons using a Thai Pro Knife. You’ll find both in our online shop. You can see a fast overview of making strawberry roses in the video I published in a previous blog post.

Go!
Let the Tea Party Begin.

Sometimes a party begins before the host is fully ready. My guests were on time, but I was running late. When this happens don’t fret. Just give them a little something to drink or eat and they won’t mind watching the final preparations. Especially if you are going to put together something creative or interesting. They might even want to help.

Our guests started to arrive to our Valentine’s tea party before everything was complete. (They were on time. I was running late.) We surprised them by serving white wine from a pretty teapot into Gretchen’s family heirloom china tea cups.

Just for fun, Gretchen brought some vintage hats from the 1940s and strings of pearls for each of us to wear for our tea party. Because the hats might seem silly, Gretchen and I were on the fence about bringing them out. But the first guest arrived just as we started looking at them and trying them on. We answered the door with our hats on and that was it. The hats were a hit!

Last Minute Plate Decoration

After our guests arrived, I created a simple plate decoration for the plate that would be used to serve some of the hot hors d’eouvres.

I served the small mushroom turnovers hot on the platter that had the vegetable plate decoration. In addition, we served baked pastries with caramelized onions and feta cheese, as well as pop-overs straight from the oven. But, no photos of those were taken.

I used the Wavy Peeler on the edges of the cucumber that formed the petals and leaf, and I used the Corrugated U-Cutter with Mini-Melon Baller set to make the radish flowers. You can get both in our online shop. You can see how to make the radish flower in my free radish bouquet lesson. Sign up for your free lesson after you click here. The stems are green onions. Pomegranate seeds were added, too.

Here’s a closer look at the fast, simple vegetable plate decoration that I threw together after the guests had arrived.

The popovers turned out well and came loose from the pan easily. Whew! Occasionally, my pop-overs don’t turn out so well. We served them with butter, assorted jams and honey. My favorite was the Hot and Sweet Pepper Jelly from Trader Joe’s. MMmm. Sorry. no photos were taken of those. We were too busy eating them.

After Thoughts

I regret that I never got a photo of the fully set table. This photo was taken was after everyone but me had used their champagne flute and tea cups, but, before we ate. We served pink champagne with a fresh raspberry in each glass. You can see one lone flute with it’s raspberry.

In conclusion, everyone had a fun time. They got into the spirit of hats, pearls and tea. Gretchen (on the far right) and I (on the far left) had a lot of fun planning and preparing our Valentine’s tea party.

Hosting your own Valentine’s Tea Party

I hope that these Valentine’s tea party photos might inspire you to pull together a tea party for your friends or maybe for your daughters or granddaughters. If you purchase most (or all) of your food pre-prepared, you can focus on the presentation and on enjoying yourself. Trader’s Joe’s made it easy. We bought all the food and flowers there. All except the pop-overs which I made from scratch. But you can get all the ingredients for pop-overs at Trader Joe’s as well. You might think this sounds like an advertisement for Trader Joe’s, but his is not a blog post sponsored by them in any way. I just happen to love their food selection at great prices.

Keeping your tea party smaller makes it easier, more fun and more intimate because you can relax more. In the past, I’ve done a similar tea parties for about 20. This tea party was a lot more fun because it was only for 5 people. In addition, don’t be afraid to add an element of silliness because that element (like our hats and pearls) can turn out to be a hit.

Whether it be a Tea Party for next Valentine’s Day, or a tea party for any other occasion, have fun coming up own creative ideas.