Claridge's Festive Afternoon Tea

My love for the very English afternoon tea started when I surprised my mum with a trip to Claridge's in London to celebrate her 90th birthday with afternoon tea. 

As mum's birthday was in the run up to Christmas they were serving

Chocolate Christmas Puddings

a festive afternoon tea with champagne and a chocolate Christmas puddings.

The 5 star hotel looked magical deck out with silver trees and glass baubles.  Once in the foyer we were escorted to our table in the reading room and introduced to our waiter.

The round table was cover in a crisp white table cloth.  The table was laid out with  pale green and white china and silver cutlery.  We were given a menu to choose which tea we would like with our afternoon tea.  We chose Assam tea which is a favourite of ours.

A short while later our tea arrive followed by a selection of finger sandwiches which kept to a festive theme.  The cakes included macaroons with an apple filling, chocolate orange cake and Christmas cake.

 The scones were warm when they arrived with a selection of premium jams and clotted cream. Our final treat was chocolate Christmas puddings on a bed of icing sugar  and inside was favoured crunchy buscuit dessert that actually smelled and tasted of Christmas pudding.  Our afternoon tea lasted around 3 hours but was over in the blink of an eye.  The hotel staff are extremely friendly and nothing is too much.  They even took photographs of us.  Before we left we were each given a box of Panettone. 

We were also asked if we would like to take home any cakes that we had not eaten I thought that was a lovely idea as there were four types of cake for each person.  The cakes were fairly large compared to some teas I have had so we ended up taking home around four cakes.  This was the nearest you will get to the ultimate afternoon tea.  Because it is very popular I had to booked 7 months in advance to make sure that I was able to get the the day and time that I wanted.  The cost was expensive but you are not just paying for afternoon tea but an experience.  

If you have a special occasion it is worth the expense.  For me it was worth it just to see mum's face light up.  This was one of the items on her bucket list of things she wanted to achieve.  I have given this afternoon tea a 5/5.