Few things are more British than tea...

othing like an international extravaganza--Olympics, anyone?--to bring out the festive. We closed off the medal chase at work yesterday with a English-inspired tea-for-lunch to celebrate, complete with fabulous decor and flowers (my sister-in-law knows how to throw a party, for sure!), and even cut-outs of the royal family to facilitate the mood.

The menu for our tea (it was really hard for me to narrow the choices down, so many fun things to choose from!):

Tea sandwiches
Egg salad with chives
Blue cheese with watercress
Cucumber
Coronation chicken salad
Salmon mousse

Quiches
Roasted red pepper with cheddar
Artichoke with sundried tomato

Union Jack cheesecake berry puff (above)

Union Jack petit fours (top photo) 

Violet shortbreads (below)

Banbury tarts

Trifle

Cream scones

Lemon curd

Clotted cream

Strawberry jam

Iced tea with lavender, hibiscus and ginger-passionfruit simple syrups to flavor

Those Brits, not too shy with the butter... or the cream! 

The recipes worth sharing are bold, above. If I adapted them, I'll post what I did and how it evolved... but the recipes I found online are linked to those sites. I will work on posting the others in the next week or so.

It's always a little sad when the Olypmics are finished, even if this time around I didn't watch nearly the amount I usually do... but, soon enough we'll be in Russia for 2014 and Rio for 2016... crazy how quickly that will be upon us!

Off to have a little scone with my coffee (uh-oh, maybe I should have said tea...).