Cooking Up a Field Trip: Tea for Two

One of the highlights of our trip to Sydney (at least for me) was enjoying a "traditional" high tea at the beautiful and historic Sir Stamford Hotel. Australians have taken this English tradition and made it their own. Traditional English high tea is what we might consider "dinner" - a large meal served late in the afternoon. In Australia, high tea can be served anytime in the early afternoon, as early as 11:00 am in fact (which is not even technically after noon and is definitely nowhere near dinner time for us).

The first scones I ever had were in Australia when I visited for the first time over 15 years ago. They are so different from the traditional English version that for years I was completely confused. Where an English scone (or maybe just the American version of an English scone?) is more dense and crumbling, an Australian scone is more light and flaky, kind of like a biscuit. Are you confused yet? I know I am.


But when you have tea at the Sir Stamford, it doesn't really matter what a proper scone is. It's just good. And what's more, they have a special tea service for kids so it was just that much better because I got to share a favorite indulgence with the Kid.

At the end of the day, I'm pretty sure the Kid enjoyed his tea just as much as I enjoyed mine.

High Tea for Kids at the Sir Stamford
Sir Stamford at Circular Quay 
93 Macquarie Street Sydney, NSW 2000Australia 
Reservations: 02 9252 4286

Baking a Wish

For close to a year now, I've been volunteering with an amazing group here in Austin that combines two of my passions - volunteerism benefiting at-risk and abused children and baking. Through Bake A Wish, I've had the pleasure of baking custom cakes for kids and other folks in need throughout Austin - everything from a Spiderman cake to one celebrating a month's worth of birthdays and featuring the flags of Mexico and Mauritania.

Delivering these cakes has been both heartwarming and heartbreaking - the poignancy of how something as simple as a smile and a cake can impact a child's life. I've included the Kid in many of my cake-baking and decorating adventures (he usually gets his own little cake to decorate while I make the one for donation) and even brought him along for a delivery or two. So Bake A Wish has also given me the opportunity to expose my kiddo to the power of volunteerism at a young age - something I hope he will carry with him as he grows up.

So you can imagine how excited I was when the board of the Austin Food Blogger Alliance accepted my proposal to make Bake A Wish the focus of our annual fundraiser! I hope you'll join me and my fellow food bloggers of Austin as we raise money and awareness for Bake A Wish this July 25. Tickets are on sale now via TicketBud - http://afba.ticketbud.com/cupcakes-cocktails.