Afternoon Tea: two ideas for the sweet course

Posted by Lou. The time is 9.35pm here in London UK.

This past weekend I had the good fortune of sharing afternoon tea with two wonderful ladies in a gorgeous backyard on one of the sunniest most beautiful days I have seen in London.

We shared out a course each with Heidi providing sandwiches, Kelly (our host) the baked course, and me sweet treats. I decided to keep it simple and make two different sets of mini tarts, going for citrus and chocolate (which, of course, between them are the cornerstone of my cooking life!).

My first set of tarts were bitter chocolate meringue, which consisted of a basic biscuit base (approx 100g crushed digestives per 25g melted butter, mixed till they hold form when squeezed in your fist) with a dash of cocoa added, with an extraordinarily simple filling of 70% chocolate melted (200g) with cream (1/2 cup).

After they have been left in the fridge to set for a while, chuck on meringue (4 egg whites beaten till stiff with approx 220g castor sugar gradually added), and cook for 15 mins/ until golden.

Lemon in the ramekins on the left, bitter chocolate in the

silicon muffin cases on the right (not that you can tell the difference)

Second was lemon meringue, with the same base as above minus the cocoa, and a filling of lemon curd (I use Delia's simple recipe), meringue chucked on top. Conveniently, by the time you've made the lemon curd the bitter chocolate filling will be chilled so they can go into the oven together (if you happen to be making both!).

The added bonus was that with leftover egg white you can make some (flat, in my case) meringues as an extra treat!

I perhaps went a little bit too not-mini on the size as after eating Heidi's delicious cucumber and bellpepper cream-cheese sandwiches over a cup of tea, followed by Kelly's perfect scones with strawberry jam and clotted cream over a couple of glasses of bubbly, we were feeling a bit too full for the whole sweet delight. But managed to get it down in the end, of course.

Please note the awesome doily tray Kelly scored for £1 in a local store