Every three months my college best friends and I try to meet up for tea and to “spill the tea” on what is going on in our lives. Three years ago we met up for axe throwing and then tea. I wanted to find a somewhere we could do both and discovered The RoyalTEA Garden not too far from an axe throwing place.
The RoyalTEA Garden was opened in 2021 and is located in Pleasanton, CA. It offers the afternoon tea experience; along with pastries, tea sandwiches, and cakes to go. They also offer teas, spoons, cups, sweets, and more teatime related items in their gift shop.
When I visited in October of 2021, the visit coincided with my week with Flat Jane (although I wasn’t able to take any pictures as I forgot her in the car) and the 31 Days of Hallotean, Day 16: “Tea for a Halloqueen.”
I highly recommend going to The RoyalTEA Garden as it was a beautiful space, had wonderful food, the staff was extremely friendly and efficient, and the tea was delicious. It was a delightful experience and I will most definitely be back.
My friends and I had the Lavender Earl Grey Tea, Duchess Grey Tea, and an Irish Tea Blend. My friends and I ended up sharing our teas with each other and all were delightful.
We had excellent vanilla scones with clotted cream, jam, and lemon curd.
We also had fruit, chicken salad sandwiches, cucumber cream cheese sandwiches, egg salad sandwiches, a mini hand pie, spinach puff, and a corn & bean salad. Everything was so good, I couldn’t even have dessert!
I really enjoyed the corn and bean salad, something I ended up making later for our Books, Tea, and the Trinity Book Club/Bible Study.
Everything was amazing and $44 per person before tax and tip.
It was a wonderful experience that we all enjoyed. I definitely recommend it if you are in the Pleasanton area.
Back in 2022 some friends and I had a tea party every month.
It all started when my friend was gifted the book,“The Twelve Teas of Celebration”, a book that has themes to hold a tea each month of the year. She decided she wanted to do this, and had people sign up to share in hosting, planning, and preparing food and games. This inspired both my Valentea and Hallotean Party.
And eat scones!
The first month’s theme was Twelfth Night. Twelfth Night refers to how people would celebrate the 12 Days of Christmas, ending on the twelfth night or epiphany. Epiphany commemorates the coming of the magi. The book suggested several recipes (which we ignored) and a couple games. The first game was to write down your goal for the year and then one person would read them out and we had to try and guess who went with which goal.
The second game was a Shakespeare themed game. My friend had me check out as many different copies of his work as I could and then we were given a random page from a random book to read. Whoever had the best presentation won the game.
For our tea we had sandwiches, fruit, soup, scones and cupcakes. I was on scones and made Teatime Magazine’s Hot Cross Scones and David Atherton’s Heart-Stopper Scones.
I shared the Hot Cross buns/Hot Cross Scones recipe the other day and now am sharing the Heart-Stopper Scones. We added the book Bake, Make, & Learn to Cook at the library and I checked it out to read as I thought it might be a good gift for a friend who had just started baking with his daughter and was a fan of The Great British Bake-Off. When I looked through the book this recipe jumped out at me and I had to try it.
Ingredients:
3 cups self-rising flour
1 tsp baking powder
¼ cup granulated sugar
6 tbsp butter (diced)
¾ cup milk
Some extra milk
A jar of strawberry jam
Directions:
1) Preheat oven to 350 degrees F.
2) In a bowl, rub the butter, flour, baking powder, and sugar until the mixture looks like breadcrumbs.
3) Pour in the milk.
4) Mix until it just forms a dough and let sit for 10 minutes.
5) On a floured surface roll out the dough until roughly 1/4 inch thick.
6) Cut out scones using a 2 inch cookie cutter.
7) In half of the scones, cut out a heart using a small heart-shaped cookie cutter.
8) Brush a little milk onto each scone.
9) Place a heart scone on top of each complete scone and fill the hole with jam (not quite to the top).
10) Transfer to a lined baking sheet for 15 minutes.
11) Leave to cool on a cooling rack before eating. (The jam will be very, very hot.)
These were okay. They weren’t as loved as the other scones but were eaten.
Back in 2022 some friends and I had a tea party every month.
Party time!
It all started when my friend was gifted the book,“The Twelve Teas of Celebration”, a book that has themes to hold a tea each month of the year. She decided she wanted to do this, and had people sign up to share in hosting, planning, and preparing food and games. This inspired my Hallotean Party.
The first month’s theme was Twelfth Night. Twelfth Night refers to how people would celebrate the 12 Days of Christmas, ending on the twelfth night or epiphany. Epiphany commemorates the coming of the magi. The book suggested several recipes (which we ignored) and a couple games. The first game was to write down your goal for the year and then one person would read them out and we had to try and guess who went with which goal.
The second game was a Shakespeare themed game. My friend had me check out as many different copies of his work as I could and then we were given a random page from a random book to read. Whoever had the best presentation won the game.
For our tea we had sandwiches, fruit, soup, scones and cupcakes. I was on scones and made Teatime Magazine’s Hot Cross Scones and David Atherton’s Heart-Stopper Scones.
Even though Hot Cross buns/Hot Cross Scones are an Easter item, as they represent the body of Christ and the breaking of it symbolizes the Last Supper. I thought that since we were celebrating Epiphany the Hot Cross Scones fit with it. I didn’t follow the recipe exactly, but made a few changes.
Ingredients:
1½ cups self-rising flour
1 teaspoon ground allspice
½ teaspoon ground nutmeg
¼ cup sugar
¼ cup cold butter
½ cup heavy whipping cream
1 teaspoon vanilla extract
1 cup confectioners’ sugar
1 tablespoon plus 1 teaspoon milk
Directions:
Preheat oven to 350°.
Line a baking sheet with parchment paper. Set aside.
In a medium bowl, combine flour, allspice, nutmeg, and sugar, whisking well. Using a pastry blender, cut butter into flour mixture until mixture resembles coarse crumbs.
Combine cream and vanilla. Add cream mixture to flour mixture, stirring lightly with a spoon until dough comes together. (If mixture seems dry, add more cream, 1 tablespoon at a time, until a dough forms.)
Using a ¼-cup scoop, drop dough onto prepared baking sheet.
Bake until edges are light brown, 18 to 20 minutes. Let cool on a wire rack.
In a medium bowl, combine confectioners’ sugar and milk, stirring until mixture is smooth. (Mixture should be somewhat thick. If necessary, add another teaspoon milk to achieve desired consistency.) Transfer mixture to a piping bag fitted with a medium round tip or to a squeeze bottle. Pipe a cross onto each scone.
I actually didn’t have time to make the frosting to pipe and bought some instead. These were a nice solid scone. I think they would have been better if I had used homemade frosting but I definitely enjoyed them and would make them again. Everyone enjoyed them as they were all gone by the end of the tea party.
We have finally come to it my friends. The last of my Ireland posts. ☹️
Back in September of last year, after many years of saving, I was finally able to take a “real” vacation, (not just a couple days and not for family reasons). My sister and I had planned years ago to “one day” do this and we purchased a cruise trip around Ireland.
It however did not go according to plan. To begin with the waves were extremely rough with the ship rocking nonstop. But I was willing to put up with that, especially as when we actually were able to get on Ireland all seemed well in Cork.
However, we discovered that the “rough weather” we faced was a lie perpetuated by the Norwegian Cruise Line; it turned out Ireland had been attacked by Hurricane Agnes. The Captain planned to take us up to Belfast to shelter off the coast, but he warned us that we might not be able to get off the ship until we reached Southampton for the final disembarkation
We spent three days stuck on the ship, but we were able to make our stop in the Killybegs’ port. We spent the day climbing Sliabh Liag, visiting Studio Donegal, and hanging out in Killeybegs.
The next day we went to Belfast and spent the day at the Titanic museum.
Our last day in Ireland we had planned to go to Dublin, but as it took us hours to tender to port, we decided to stay in Dún Laoghaire. We walked all over the city, taking a stroll on the Dún Laoghaire Pier.
We managed to finally have some Irish tea in Dun Laoghaire at the historic People’s Park.
But before you knew it, time was over and we were heading back to England to return home. It had rained while we were in Belfast so I was not feeling good that last day, with a headaches from Dun Laoghaire’s sun and very sure of having an ear infection. I stayed the last day mostly in the room, while my sister (who had had terrible seasickness from the hurricane) was feeling better and exploring the ship. Due to my two cats, I am an early riser. My sister, however, sleeps in. She went to lunch much later than I had been and discovered that our cruise ship offered a afternoon tea.
Every day the ship would post in their app (the only thing we could access for free, anything else we needed to pay for wifi) and while it listed out the restaurants it never mentioned offering tea in the Garden Cafè; just breakfast, lunch, and dinner. I also had checked their website before we left and did not see any mention of it. I’m not sure if they did this every day or just on perhaps the last day?
Oh well…
The Garden Café is the buffet that is included with your cruise line price. On the Norwegian Star, our ship, the Garden Café can be accessed from either side of the floor but was shaped strange so you cannot fully circle the cafe without exiting and walking down or up a floor to then enter from the opposite side.
I’m not really a buffet person and did enjoy some food from it, but I also ate a lot from a resturant that was also included in our cruise price.
The Café looked like your standard buffet place. It had these large windows so you could look out, but for most of the trip there was nothing for see due to the fog or rain. It was very difficult to get one of the seats by the window as they were always the first to be taken.
The didn’t after too many choices for tea. Everything was Lipton standard tea; although I did manage to root out some Earl Grey. I was so happy as that is my favorite.
For the tea treats there was current and plain scones with clotted cream, lemon curd, or strawberry jam. They also had some egg salad sandwiches.
When I arrived it was clear the sandwiches had been sitting out and were not in anything to keep their temperature cool, so I decided to skip those and just have the scones.
The scones were very delicious and so was the clotted cream and lemon curd. I found everything enjoyable and had my only wish was that they had either offered tea more on the cruise if this was the only time, or if it was a reoccurring thing they had let us know about it so I could have enjoyed it all those days I was trapped on the boat.
It definitely would have made those days a better experience…but at least it made the last day a better one.
That’s it for our Ireland trip. To read the other posts, click on one of the below links:
I have mentioned in my previous posts, I have been wanting to take a “real” vacation, (not just a couple days and not for family reasons) for a looong time but I haven’t been able to these past few years for various reasons. I was finally able to in September 2023, as my sister and I purchased a cruise trip around Ireland.
It however did not go according to plan. To begin with the waves were extremely rough with the ship rocking nonstop. But I was willing to put up with that, we were on a cruise after all.
However, we discovered that the “rough weather” was a lie perpetuated by the Norwegian Cruise line, it turned out Ireland had been attacked by Hurricane Agnes. The Captain planned to take us up to Belfast to shelter off the coast, but he warned us that we might not be able to get off the ship until we reached Southampton for the final disembarkation
We were up bright and early, ready to get off the ship ASAP! As soon as we got off the ship we saw a rainbow, and felt like maybe our luck was finally turning around.
After spending about 45 minutes in town we headed back to the ship to board our bus for our Sliabh Liag (pronounced Sleeve League) tour. The roads are small and tight and we had to switch to smaller buses before we headed up to the cliffside. Before going to the cliffs part of our package included stopping at the Tí Linn Cafe & Craft Shop.
After our hike, we headed back down the cliffside and stopped at Studio Donegal. It is a super cute craft shop that careies on started in the 1960s to preserve the Donegal cultural tradition of hand weaving. All items are homemade, handwoven, and use 100% Irish wool. We stopped by and said hello to some seamstresses and saw a little bit of a presentation by a weaver. I bought I few things but afterwards had wished I bought more as everything in there was so cute and so nice. A definite must visit!
After we returned to Killeybegs we walked around the city following a historic walking tour, visiting the church, my sister stopped to try a Guinness in a local pub, spotted a cat that looked just like Gareth in Time Cat, and we did a lot of shopping (just in case we weren’t able to stop anywhere else). After spending the whole day in Killeybegs we decided to head back and try and eat at the Asian Resturant that did not take reservations. As we headed back to the ship I spotted the tea cart On our walk back we stopped at a tea cart An Capall Mara (The Seahorse).
An Capall Mara is a converted coffee horsebox, and has been serving coffee, tea, and baked goods since May 2020.
All their products are locally sourced and they are located in Killeybegs Bay.
Besides baked goods and drinks, they also serve cute postcards designed by the owner’s 14-year old son.
I was craving a matcha latte as the ship only had bagged tea or you could pay $5 for a chai latte. I stopped and ordered one on our walk back and it was delicious, perfectly blended and definitely high grade matcha.
Delicious tea, friendly staff, a great place to get a nice cup of tea as you stroll the bay.
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