Tea and Cake Planet

Despite the fact I charged the batteries especially, I forgot to bring my camera, so apologies for lack of photos.

Today I went to Tea and Cake planet at the Boiler House in Newcastle. I paid £15:50, which included entry into the one of event, and a *TeaShed afternoon tea.

The venue itself wasn't very large, and I don't know if I would have thought it worth the general admission fee if it wasn't for the fact I was going for afternoon tea. There were some tea vendors and a couple of food stalls as well as live music and some lindy hop dancers.

I attended a talk on "The Science of Tea". As someone with a Biochemistry degree, I found it rather light on the science front, but I was probably a little unusual on that. I did get to taste several teas including teabag black, loose leaf black, green, lapsong suchong, darjeeling and assam, however to my taste all of the teas had been "masted" (what I would call "mashed"- it just means infused) for too long and were not at their best. I did taste teas a little later with Tea Owl and her infusion times were much more to my liking.

My afternoon tea was provided by the *TeaShed, and started with what they described as an "amazing popaball cocktail" which was squash with weird jelly balls. There was unlimited tea available, I had 5 cups in all- one Rosie *Lee (a yummy darjeeling), one Baby it's Cold Outside *Tea (Chai, which I have never had before and didn't really enjoy), one All day breakfast *Tea, and two Mr Grey's *Tea (which I have already reviewed). There was masses of food too, I had a beef burger, a fishcake, crackers and brie, coleslaw, salad, a chocolate macaroon, a mini meringue, a mini profiterole, a piece of lemon cake and a large raisin and cherry scone with jam and cream. Needless to say I was full and won't be needing much dinner tonight. I was given two free twenty packs (Rosie *Lee and Northern *Brew) which market at £3.50 each, so overall very good value there.

From the stalls, I made two purchases, firstly flowering tea from Tea Sutra (they look so pretty) and secondly rhubarb and cream oolong from Quilliam brothers. Eventually I will have space in my cupboard so I can open them and review them. 

I enjoyed my afternoon of tea, and look forward to next year, hopefully they will get more tea merchants on board to give a wider selection of stalls. It was nice to treat myself to an afternoon tea, I'll have to do it again sometime!