It's Always Tea Time

For my birthday we went to Sketch London for Afternoon Tea. Why, when there were so many other possibilities available, did we choose Sketch? After all, we had our pick from The Dorchester, Grosvenor House to The Ritz, which is considered by some to be the ultimate Afternoon Tea experience. Sketch London sits on Conduit Street, just off Regent Street, and within walking distance from Oxford Circus station. One of the things which set Sketch apart from the rest was the Glade room (See image B), where as the website advertises, we thought out afternoon tea was going to be. (More on this later).

When walking into Sketch you see that every room is different, every room is unique. For example, as image A shows, in the entrance hall there is a hopscotch painted in white on the floor. Yes, a hopscotch!

Image A

Image B

Image B shows the Glade Room. As I mentioned before, this is where my friends and I thought our Afternoon Tea was going to be but we were led by the lady into another room. Regarding the Glade room, as you can see from the image, the walls are painted like a forest from a fairy tale. Huge trees painted against a blue background and it looked like there were branches hanging down from the ceiling. The wooden furniture continues the forest like atmosphere. So I admit I was disappointed when we were led away from this wonderful room.

 

Image C

Image C shows The Gallery room in which our Afternoon tea was held. Although it was larger and more crowded than the Glade room the atmosphere was not affected. The unique and individual style of Sketch continues as you can see from the furniture and the wallpaper. No two walls, nor 2 chairs were the same. Each table had 3/4 chairs, there were wooden chairs, chairs with a stripy pattern... 

Bar in The Gallery.

The cost of a full afternoon tea with your own choice of tea was £34 per person. There was a large variety of tea's to choose from!

I am a fan of Audrey Hepburn with Breakfast at Tiffany's being one of my favourite movies so it was a nice surprise when I saw that my teapot came with a picture of Audrey Hepburn on it. I know it is just a teapot, but a beautiful teapot and tea set in my opinion makes the experience of drinking tea even better.

Our cake stand with a beautiful array of sandwiches, cakes and macaroons!!

Sultana Scones served with clotted cream, strawberry and apple jam and marshmallows.

Unfortunately, we left the best till last, so by the time we actually got around to eating our scones they were cold!! :( However, they were still delicious once they had a generous spread of clotted cream and jam on them but my advice to you would be eat the scones first! When they arrive they are warm, so don't wait for them to get cold..

Smoked Salmon and Jacob's Cream Sandwich - one of my favourite sandwiches!!

Cucumber, Ricotta and Broccoli Sandwich - one of my least favourite sandwiches.

Egg and Mayonnaise, Quail Egg and Caviar Sandwich.

Croque Monsieur with Comte Cheese. 
Though a little oily this was delicious, and I wouldn't have minded there being 2, 3 or 4 more of these...

Fig Tartlet.

Lemon and Basil Tartlet.

Chocolate and Mint Éclair.

This wonderful éclair had caramel cream inside it and as you can see from the picture had 3 silver crispy balls set on top of the dark chocolate.

Christmas Pudding Macaroon
 I usually love macaroons but I could not finish this macaroon, the Christmas pudding flavour was too much.

Coconut and White Chocolate Lollipop.

Tapioca Pudding with Pomegranate Coulis, Pistachio and Champagne Jelly- Sammii's favourite from the menu! I myself couldn't eat this because it had champagne in it.

Half way through our tea, a little surprise in the form of a birthday plate came out for me! Seems like my friends had told Sketch beforehand that it was my birthday :) One minute I was munching my way through one of the sandwiches and the next minute the waitress was walking towards my table with the birthday plate where she began to sing happy birthday to me along with my friends. It was a lovely surprise, and was the key moment in the whole afternoon tea experience for me.

To get to the toilets you had to walk up a white coloured flight of stairs, with the male toilets on the left hand side, and the female on the right. However, with the lack of any signs showing which was which, this was not made clear and luckily we just happened to walk up the right side.

Now if the glade room was like something out of a fairy tale, the toilets were like something out of a science-fiction movie. In fact, in my opinion, they strongly resembled alien pods.... what do you think? 

And to make things even more bizarre, while you do your business in the toilet a female voice sang Silent Night out to you! On top of that the toilet attendants were wearing French maid costumes! Strangeness coupled with wacky, it was sensational! 

Our waitress for the afternoon was lovely. She made the experience even more pleasant, always had a smile on and was happy to help! From the moment we started eating, you could tell that all the food was made from fresh top of the range ingredients- It was a delight to the taste buds and a feast for the eyes! Now I am not just talking about the food, but about the whole presentation of the table, the decor of the venue, the uniqueness of absolutely everything from the teapots to the toilets. To me an afternoon at Sketch was not only a delightful meeting over tea but an adventure of creativity. Sketch proves that it pays excellent attention to detail! Would I go back? Definitely!!

And to finish off our afternoon of tea... Our bill was delivered in a beautiful gold sandpaper-envelope! 

Atmosphere  9/10

Food             7/10

Service          9/10

Chocolatesushi Rating 9/10

Matcha Almond Cookie Love

Today we will be trying the matcha almond cookie recipe from the Rasamalaysia blog we found here, edited in sight of Valentine's day :) 

Ingredients:

• 1/2 cup (1 stick) unsalted butter, softened
• 1/2 cup packed powdered sugar
• 1 cup all purpose flour
• 1 tablespoon matcha powder
• 1/8 teaspoon salt
• 1/3 cup sliced almonds, lightly chopped
• Writing icing for decoration (optional)

Method:

1. Sift together the all purpose flour, matcha powder and salt.

2. With an electric mixer at medium speed, cream the butter and powdered sugar until fluffy.

3. Lower the mixer speed. Add in sifted ingredients 1 tablespoon at a time until dough is formed.

4. Add in the sliced almond in 3 batches and stop the mixer immediately once all combined.

5. Remove the dough and place on a 22 inches long plastic wrap. Roll the dough into a 1 1/2 inches thick log. Wrap the log with the plastic wrap and freeze for 30 minutes.

6. Pre-heat the oven to 325 degree Fahrenheit. Line two baking sheets with parchment papers.

Remove the dough from the freezer. Use a sharp knife and cut the dough 1/4 inch thick each. Arrange the cookie dough on the baking pan 2 inches apart.

7. Bake them for 14-16 minutes on the middle rack. Remove the cookies to wire rack to cool completely before storing in air tight containers.

8. Now time for some fun!

9. Decorate cookies as desired! Though they will taste fine by themselves if not even better!

Happy Valentine's Day! :) Hope you all enjoy today spending time with your loved ones!

N.B. The original blog from which we found the recipe specified to use an electric whisk to mix the ingredients together. As we didn't have an electric whisk we mixed everything by hand and still achieved the desired outcome, so basically don't worry if you don't have an electric whisk at hand! However, we would advise that you measure your ingredients properly as through estimation we added too much butter and sugar into our mixture. The cookies still tasted delicious but if you don't like your cookies really sweet measure properly!!