cucumber sandwiches and lemon cake

Today was the big day, the Downton Abbey tea at Woolbearers in Mount Holly!

In addition to white table linens, teapots and teacups, I took down a lemon cake and cucumber sandwiches to make it as proper as possible in the middle of a yarn store. The lemon cake was a box mix from Shoprite but fairly impressive result all the same, especially when iced with powdered sugar (that's the snowflake overlay, which looked better before the powder dissolved on the top; I had to reapply just before leaving for the class). Only a silver serving tray would do!

My friend Chris gave me a few tips for successful cucumber sandwiches, which you may find useful if you ever need to host a tea:

• Use a pre-sliced bread of good quality; obviously, I opted for Pepperidge Farm "very thin" white bread.


• Buy the cucumbers that are individually wrapped in saran wrap, labeled "hothouse" or "english" seedless cucumbers.


• Thoroughly soften the butter, preferably unsalted, then butter both insides of the bread before putting on the cucumbers.


• Slice the cucumbers thinly; I used a mandolin to make them as even as possible. No need to take off the skins.


• Sprinkle a little salt on the cucumbers before putting the sandwiches together, cutting off the crusts and slicing them diagonally.

Last but not least: make them as closely to the event as possible so they don't get soggy!

They were a huge hit—not a single one remained, with me eating only one little quarter to make sure they were okay.

The rest of the class went just as well, I think. Certainly we all had a good time and eight new tams are well on their way. I can't wait to see all the results, because the color combinations chosen, not one like the original, were really great.