“At half past three, everything stops for tea”
Don’t worry, we weren’t familiar with this saying either although synonymous with the British tradition of tea-drinking. This week is National Afternoon Tea Week, so we wanted to make sure to have a closer look (and tasting) for this occasion. We were soon to gain a greater respect and understanding for the topic!
In the early nineteenth century, people had only two main meals a day - breakfast and dinner. It was Anna, the 7th Duchess of Bedford, who first complained about “having a sinking feeling” in the late afternoon so she started to have tea accompanied by sandwiches and cakes. It soon became a habit and other social hostesses quickly spread the idea.
Today, afternoon tea still belongs to the British culture, even though it is more an occasional luxury than a daily tradition.
The team here at Gold Engel was invited by the wonderfully talented Executive Pastry Chef Heather Kaniuk to indulge ourselves in one of the best afternoon teas in London at the Mandarin Oriental Hyde Park.
We sat down with Heather in The Rosebery Lounge for a cake date where she walked us through her award-winning afternoon tea.
Heather Kaniuk, originally from New Zealand, became interested in the world of pastries at a very young age. Her grandmother used to be a cake decorator, and as a child she had the opportunity to watch and learn this skilled trade.
She started her career in a male-dominated food industry, working for famous chefs including Gordon Ramsay, and transferred into the patisserie field at a later stage. Currently, she is working as Executive Pastry Chef at the Mandarin Oriental Hyde Park, a prestigious and luxurious 5-star hotel. Her pastry creations are innovative and beautiful, often containing a mixture of Western and Eastern influences: “I really love middle eastern food, so I really like to play around with saffron, oranges, dates, pine nuts - the flavors you don’t normally use in pastries.”
Heather received the “Afternoon Tea UK Award 2016″ for Best Contemporary Afternoon Tea. We can tell why:
The menu started with a summery fresh vanilla panna cotta with raspberries and lychees.
A selection of sandwiches and cakes followed, beautifully adorned and placed on luxurious plates, accompanied by some of the most delicious tea we’ve had the pleasure to drink.
A selection of hand-made pastries was the next course, including (from left to right) the vanilla and strawberry millefeuille, an exclusive apricot-lavender pastry, white peach and lemon verbena choux, gooseberry and mascarpone lime tart and the ice-cream “SOLERO” macaron. There were also traditional warm scones with clotted cream and home-made jams, including the delicious rose petal jam. (Don’t ask us how we managed to eat it all.)
Everything you see is lovingly hand-crafted in-house, hence why all the pastries have a strong personal touch. Beautiful adornments with an incomparable flavor and elegant poise. Thank you again, Heather, for a lovely afternoon and an unmistakably British delicacy.
