Snowflake Tea Party

Lillibeth, of The Pleasant Times, is hosting a week long snowflake event and to kick it off she had a lovely snowflake themed tea---take a peek at all the sweet wintery loveliness:

The table is set in shades of white, with clear-as-ice glass and shiny china dishes.

The menu includes sandwiches, veggies, cookies and of course, tea.

The sandwiches are cucumber-orange. They are cut in a diamond shape, and each diamond is placed just so to make a 6-pointed snowflake.

These sandwiches are so very good, you must try one. Home-made bread is spread with neufchatel cheese, and topped with one mandarin orange slice, and a thin cucumber slice.

Icicle sticks are made from parsnips and turnips, and placed in a crystal sugar creamer. Snowy cauliflower  and more sliced cucumbers are in the other dishes. On the left is our delicious sour cream dip (sour cream, dill, onion powder, garlic powder and salt, in that order and made to your taste).

And for dessert, you may have just a wee bit of each...

Snowdrift cookies (which are actually half "Whoopie Pies;"  the recipe is from the new Martha Stewart holiday cookie magazine, with the banana omitted, we also recommend to cut down on the amount of sugar a bit.)

Snowballs and mini snowflake bites,

and these giant snowflakes, which can be sliced into smaller pieces. The snowflakes are sprinkled with coconut flakes, and some are sprinkled with an edible clear glittery product from Wilton.

And for the tea, we have a variety of winter-time favorites. We tried to think of ideas in our Test Kitchen of a change from the usual sugar cube. We bounced around various ideas, and decided on this one. We made a very thick paste of powdered sugar and cream, and piped it in snowflake shapes on a plate. Then we froze it. The hope was, that these little frozen snowflakes would float on the top of the tea for just a second before sinking to the bottom, but alas! it did not work that way. However, we still think it was a nice touch for this snowflake tea party.

The centerpiece is a beautiful footed bowl, ruffled at the edges, filled with our paper snowflakes and a battery-operated LED candle that has been glittered with Epsom salts! Surrounding that are some wee "snowballs" and buttons in shades of white (which have also been scattered on the table).

Thanks so much for sharing these beautiful ideas, Lillibeth!

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