Afternoon Tea

Monday I had planed to go to Hampton Court Palace in the morning, then Kensington Palace in the afternoon and have afternoon tea in the Orangery at Kensington Palace. I made this decision ages ago when I first read about the Orangery. Apparently it was Princess Diana's favorite place to take tea (the fact that it's less than 100 yds from her house could have been part of that as well) Well....I had a bit of a problem at Hampton Court Palace, something to do with forgetting a camera...

Anyway I made it to Kensington Palace at about 3:00 which is right in the middle of tea time. I walk up to the Orangery and there's a sign saying it's closed early for a private event. :( I walk up to the host podium and ask if there's any chance I could have tea. The manager told me they were closed (even though there were more than a dozen people at tables). I made a sad face and walked away after getting an assurance that they would be open tomorrow.

Fast forward to Tuesday. I got to Kensington Palace at about 2:01 (tea starts at 2). I walked up to the Orangery again and asked for Afternoon Tea for 1. I was immediately seated. Let me first say that the china here is gorgeous. The really hard part is it's available to purchase! Like everywhere! If anyone would like to get me 4 settings of this china, let me know, I'll send you my address...

This is what I sit down to. And the waiter put my napkin in my lap! It's hard to not have terrific posture in a place like this.

I ordered a Wild Berry Fruit Infusion. While I was waiting for my tea to come, the manger came over, remembered me from yesterday and brought me a free glass of champagne to say sorry for not being able to serve me yesterday!

The tea comes in its own little pot with a bowl of sugar lumps and a tiny pitcher of cream.

I poured my tea. I tried the tea alone, and it needed something, so I added the sugar. Delicious! But I thought well, why not add some cream? They gave it to me, why not try it? So I did and it tasted pretty good. Then the tower of treats comes out. I stopped drinking to take a picture, but before I can, the manager comes back over and TAKES MY CUP AWAY! Apparently this tea isn't supposed to be drunk with cream! So he brings me a new cup. Then he takes my phone away! I thought maybe I would be in trouble for taking a picture, but no, he was just going to take the picture for me!

Then I could take the picture of my whole spread. It was quite a bit of food!

On the bottom layer were finger sandwiches. I tried each of them. There was smoked salmon with cream cheese (didn't care for). Cucumber and mint, which tasted a bit like a grass sandwich, egg salad (eh), and ham with mustard (the only one I ate all of).

The middle layer were scones with clotted cream and jam, nummy, nummy, nummy! I ate both.

The top layer included, a sponge cake with a raspberry filling, good, but nothing to write home about (I say as I write home about it...) A Battenburg cake, which is the 4 sqaure cake. Its a drier cake, with a raspberry "glue" to put the 4 parts together, and it's all covered in marzipan. I tried making a Battenburg cake at home once, it was an epic failure, the cake didn't turn out right so I didn't even try to assemble it. Then there's a chocolate...thing. It was glorious. The bottom was a hardish paper-thin layer of chocolate ganache, then a 1/4 inch chocolate cake layer, topped with like 2 inches of chocolate mousse.

I thoroughly enjoyed my afternoon tea experience. It is definitely something I recommend you do if you're ever in London. It's not cheap, but it's so worth it. I can definitely see why this was Diana's favorite place for tea.