A Lovely Cup of Tea

These last 2 weeks I’ve not been having any caffeinated drinks during the week day, but all this swapping out tea for hot water with lemon and ginger has started me thinking how little I’ve been appreciating a good cuppa.

Typically I’ll be woken up of a morning to a deliciously strong brew of Sainsbury’s Red Label, Tetley or PG Tips (thanks Thomas!) and follow up with another cup around mid-morning and another early afternoon. On the weekend we’ll often go for a fancy coffee to one of the local cafes, with cake if we’re feeling indulgent. So why have I stopped doing this with tea? Why has my tea drinking become so run of the mill? All this thinking about tea reminded me of a book I read some time ago called “A Nice Cup of Tea and A Sit Down” and it hit me – Yes! That’s what was missing, the sitting down and taking the time to enjoy whilst dunking biscuits.

So instead of popping out for a coffee and cake this weekend we’ve decided to spend the afternoon at home drinking tea and eating freshly baked biscuits! And I've spent the week trying to decide which biscuits to bake – as really you can’t just have one type. If memory serves tea should be accompanied by a selection of biscuits for the optimum enjoyment.

I’ve scoured my recipe books and magazines to find only 1 sweet biscuit recipe; a choc chip cookie that just won’t do with for an English tea! So turning to one of my favourite internet resources BBC Food, I found a few good options and have plumped for:-

Chocolate and Ginger Oat Biscuits
Shortbread

I couldn't find stem ginger so had to do without, also strangely I didn;t find ground ginger so substituted with ground galangal - close enough! I also popped to the local shops for some irresistible fig rolls!


* Pro-photos