princess cake and a late night tea party

Every year for the past three years, I have hosted a tea party for the girls in my family--which given location usually means my mom, my five! sisters, and three nieces. In other locales, I have three sisters-in-law, my mother-in-law, and another niece. The tea party is one of my favorite days of the year. I love planning the menu which always ends up being a bit excessive, spending hours prepping little sandwiches and tarts, and of course being with my girls for an afternoon. The tea party is also my way of welcoming spring.

This year, because of our move, no tea party. I was pretty sad about that. Until I realized that my sister's visit would coincide with tea party season! One guest could hardly justify my usual tea party spread, so I decided this was a perfect opportunity to make a Swedish princess cake. Princess cake is genoise layered with raspberry jam, pastry cream, and whipped cream all topped with marzipan. I've been dreaming about this cake ever since I saw it in the holiday issue of MS Living. As soon as my sister arrived, I told her my plan to make princess cake and because she is an agreeable sort and a fabulous sister, she consented to help me.

I had visions of us sitting in my backyard in the finally pleasant weather, sipping tea and savoring our lovely cake. Unfortunately, because we had to fit the cake's preparation into our already busy schedule of sightseeing and because of a few baking disasters, we ate the cake at 10:30 p.m. Not really the time for a leisurely outdoor repast. We decided to skip the tea, but I did whip up a batch of bright yellow macarons filled with lemon buttercream and crab apple jelly. It wasn't quite the tea party I had imagined, but at least I had one sister with me to welcome spring and to justify the baking of a ridiculous cake.

Hopefully one of these days soon I'll be able to have all of the girls in my ever-growing family over for a proper tea party. For now, I'll just have to settle for offering up a few pictures and all of my good thoughts. Happy spring to Mom, Lynette, Kelicia, Suzanne, Shari, Michelle, Mary Jane, Tiffany, Lizi, Frances, Carlie, Annie, Johannah, and Mingjane. How lucky I am to have such wonderful women in my life. Love you all and miss you!