Bella and Crumb have a very good friend. Let’s call her Cat, for that is her name. Cat loves nothing (and we mean nothing) in the world more than a good coffee & walnut cake and a cup of Assam.

Poor Cat’s birthday always falls when everybody is away for summer, at weddings, surfing in Cornwall, at family functions… the list goes on.

So this year, she decided to have an Unbirthday. And it would have been cruel and wrong to deny her an Unbirthday tea, wouldn’t it? So that’s what we did.

Bella and Crumb Present: A Very Merry Unbirthday Tea

Darjeeling Tea

Fortnum & Mason Royal Blend Tea

Kenya Tinderet Single-Estate Tip Assam Tea

Gin, Apple & Elderflower Cocktails

Rather a lot of rosé sparkling wine

Cheesy Sticks (because Crumb lost the foot-shaped cutter) with Tomato Chilli Jam

Filo Tarts with Walnut & Mushroom and Pesto & Cherry Tomato

Smoked Salmon and Cream Cheese & Cucumber Sandwiches

We can never make enough of these.

Freshly Baked Scones with Clotted Cream and Raspberry Jam & Homemade Lemon Curd

Coffee & Walnut Cake (of course)

Lemon Meringue Cake

Lemon & Ginger Cake Pops with Popping Candy

Chocolate Praline Mushrooms Growing in Chocolate Digestive ‘Dirt’

Birthday Cupcake Tower

Squashy...

Yum!

Yes, we know it's ridiculous. But it was funny.

The lemon curd was too loose so the top layer of lemon meringue cake started to slide off and the cake pops tried to shimmy down their inappropriately long and skinny sticks. But how could we care when we were having cocktails from teapots and scones with our best friends?

One of the nicest things about this tea was having everybody at a big table with full-sized cakes and lots of sharing.

Let's face it, this was the only thing that really mattered...

Oh, and we’d like to say thanks to Chris for the photos, because both Bella and Crumb are rubbish at photography.

“There are few hours in life more agreeable than the hour dedicated to the ceremony known as afternoon tea” ~ Henry James

Despite being youthful, modern women of the twenty-first century, there is nothing that Bella and Crumb enjoy more than feeding home-made cake to friends and family and catching up over a nice cup of tea. Over time they noticed a funny thing - that the more cakes they baked and pots of tea they brewed, the more people popped over to say hello.

Which, they thought, was no bad thing.

So they decided to put their love of cake to good use by throwing a proper Afternoon Tea  and inviting lots of new people to come along and join the fun. It needed to be held somewhere beautiful in central London, so they asked themselves, where’s the most exciting place we could hold an afternoon tea? Why, they answered themselves, in a pretty chocolate shop! Oh yes.

And, as if afternoon tea with bubbly in a chocolate shop wasn’t enough, they are ensuring that you can feel virtuous as you’re enjoying their treats, because every single penny of profit from your  £15 donation will go to charity.

Take a look at reviews from the August afternoon tea, when the weather was beautiful and we were able to sit in the garden:  Londonist’s review, and A Forkful of Spaghetti.

Afternoon tea will be held on Sunday 16th August, Sunday 20th September and Sunday 18th October, and booking is essential. Would you like to see the menu?

For more information or enquiries, contact us at bellaandcrumb@googlemail.com.