Afternoon Tea

Today Mr Ellie and I went for a lovely long drive through the moors and ended up in Richmond, one of the loveliest little market towns in North Yorkshire if you ask me. Not least worth a visit for Hutchinsons butchers who roast their own gammon, complete with crackling - £7 gets you a large chunk of meat and Mr Ellie and I will be enjoying gammon and beetroot sandwiches at work this week! Also there is The Emporium - a rabbit warren of a shop, crammed with goodies from antiques to contemporary gifts, many of which have a vintage feel.  We ummed and erred over a rather delightful plant pot holder for the garden but in th end decided it was a bit too pricey for us.  However, I did get a couple of bits for my sister's birthday (but I won't say what, just in case she reads this!!!)

We also decided to stop for a bite to eat and we chose Lily's tearooms as we liked the look of the place - vintage, pastels and quite Cath Kidston-esque inspirations.  They are open for sit-in or takeaway options and even have a little shop in the back where you can buy napkins etc. along the same style as the cafe.

Lily's does a fairly typical menu of jacket potatoes, paninis cakes and some hot meals so we knew we would both get something that we liked.  However, as soon as the menu arrived, our eyes lit up at the promise of an Afternoon Tea - now Mr Ellie and I can't resist an afternoon tea so we ordered two (possibly a little ambitious) and sat back to relax.

The tea came in a large teapot accompanied by lovely pink cups and saucers.  I think it was a Twinings tea and it was beautiful - really nice and strong but not bitter.  My only criticism was that the sugar was in those little stick packets and I think that a bowl of sugar cubes would have been more in keeping with the ambience.  Mr Ellie pointed out that as I don't take sugar in my tea, this was a little bit of unnecessary criticism (as he poured his third sugar into his cup - I swear he drinks sugar flavoured with tea rather than tea with sugar!!).  The teapot was very generous - each of us getting at least 3 cups of tea.

Then came the afternoon tea itself...

I had chosen Yorkshire ham sandwiches and asked for them to come with cucumber instead of tomato and Mr Ellie had tuna mayonnaise (without the cucumber).  My ham was lovely, really good quality and tasty to boot.  I felt that the bread was a little dry but it didn't detract from the taste.  We then scoffed down our lovely cupcakes.  They were vanilla cupcakes, again a little dry but that's often the way with cupcakes, but a good taste and light texture.  Mine had a good quantity of tasty chocolate buttercream and a slice of Terry's chocolate orange for decoration and Mr Ellie's cupcake had lemon buttercream and a white chocolate coin.  The icing was light and fluffy and generously flavoured.  By this time, both of us were feeling a little full but (bravely!) carried on regardless with the scones.  The photo doesn't really do justice to the size of the scones - they were enormous! I had a cherry scone and Mr Ellie a fruit scone.  Both were packed with fruit, were crunchy around the outside and soft in the middle - a real delight.  With them we got strawberry jam and whipped cream (in case we hadn't already had enough calories!) and they were absolutely delicious.  By the time we'd finished, we were stuffed!

The Afternoon Teas were £7.50 each and I think well worth the money - they were very generous, the quality of the food was high and they were served on nice china and in a lovely setting. Overall I'd give Lily's a 4.8 out of 5 - they lost the 0.2 marks for the sugar being in packets and because the teapot was a bit leaky.  However, I'd highly recommend anyone in or visiting Richmond to give Lily's a go, you won't be disappointed!

As an aside, I will be doing some more baking and crafting in the near future and will blog about my adventures.  I've just had my second operation on my wrists so now I should be fixed and ready to go! Between my problematic wrists and being hectic with ferret-related activities recently, I've not had much time for any crafting but hopefully now things will change in that respect.

Miss Ellie xxx