Sweeten Up Your Tea Time
Any day is a good day for a tea party. Who couldn’t use a little break from the ordinary for a cup of tea and maybe a sweet treat?
Whether the “party” is just your household right now, with or without some invited guests like dolls and teddy bears, you can add a little sparkle in some easy ways.
Sugar cubes are a nice addition. For one thing, they’re inexpensive - name brands like C&H and Domino’s sell them for around $2 for a box of between 126 and 198, at regular grocery stores. Plus, they offer portion control, which could be important with kids self-serving.
To take it to a whole new level, decorate them! When my girls were young, we used toothpicks and food coloring to paint hearts and flowers on them, an idea I got from my mom who said she did those when she was a girl. The bonus on that is the connection with Grandma – doing something she did when she was little.
The how-to is pretty straightforward, but here are some tips. We squeezed just a couple drops of each color onto a plate, then tapped the tip of the toothpick a few times to dull it a little before dipping in the color. The coloring in the ubiquitous four bottle boxed set that everyone has worked fine. Our red bottle was nearly gone so I bought a bottle of gel coloring in the cake decorating section of a craft store. It looked like it stained my Corelle plate but after a little soak it was gone.
If you look closely, you’ll see that sugar cubes have two sides that are particularly smooth, so use those. You’re bound to get some boo-boos, probably a lot actually, but that’s no problem - try again on another face of the cube. Good, or not so, they’ll still sweeten your tea so there’s really no waste.
These designs are general purpose and also are particularly well suited to St. Valentine’s Day, Mother’s Day or other special celebrations. For a Christmas tea at our church a few years ago, we made snowmen, presents, Christmas trees, mangers and more.
For other options, a quick web search turned up images of some sugar cubes that were decorated with icing. Some look like they were made with a pastry bag and star tip in a simple flower pattern, and some are way more intricately decorated. Wow, I even saw that you can make your own with molds and even flavor them. Who knew?
As for the sweets component, petit fours may come to mind. Oooh, they’re so pretty and fancy. Making them, however, is way too much fuss and expense for afternoon teas with little ones and their stuffed animal friends.
Little Debbie to the rescue! Yes, that snack cake brand that has been around for ages. They have several varieties that are easily transformed into petit fours. They only cost about $2 per box so for six bucks you can get three varieties and make mounds of treats for your party and still have some left for regular snacking, even .
For the very simplest, just slice the ends off the rectangle shaped ones like the Frosted Fudge Cakes and then cut them in squares. The top and two sides will still be frosted and the other two sides will show off the layers. Do the same with the white square ones called Fancy Cakes, or if you happen to have mini cookie cutters, you can even cut shapes like hearts or circles from those. Try cutting Zebra Cakes into triangles. Slices of the Fudge Rolls and Strawberry Rolls look great sliced too.
For a little extra glitz, this would be a good time to use a piping bag and star tip to make little flowers on top. Or you can try one of the frosting recipes online and completely cover them or do a drizzle, or both.
For super simple, check the baking aisle at a craft shop and get a package of pre-made icing decorations and just place them on. And hey, Little Debbie’s “Birthday Cake” variety already has sprinkles on top!
Because these snack cakes are individually wrapped, you can use a few from each box and save the rest for another time, especially if you take them out of the original boxes and hide them in the freezer, behind the peas maybe.
And the neatest trick to making treats look special is to use pretty muffin cup liners and paper doilies. I buy my doilies at Dollar Tree - all sizes and shapes of white ones, and seasonal shapes too like hearts and shamrocks. Craft stores carry regular size and mini muffin liners in tons of colors and designs.
So sweeten up a special occasion or make an ordinary day special with some tea party fun.
