This is one of the books that I bought as part of my $400-worth-of-books-in-two-months book buying binge (that was a mouthful) and I have absolutely no regrets! I first saw this on Book Depository for about $15 and had it in my wishlist when I saw it on the remaindered books site for $5. Obviously, I was going to cart this out.

Tea Fit for a Queen is a cookbook of recipes from the kitchens of the Historic Royal Palaces. There is a nice selection of sweet and savoury food, but since I primarily provide sweet treats to my family, all three things that I tried from the book are sweet bakes. The treats are:

Dark Chocolate Squares

These were even better than the national trust brownies – the squares were fudgy, a bit chewy and utterly delicious! The only downside is that they were very crumbly and I had a hard time cutting them into squares. I’m not sure if that’s an issue with my toaster oven, so I’ll have to experiment more to see.

These will dry out after three or four days, but honestly, if you have a couple of people in your house, they’ll probably be polished off pretty quickly.

Lemon Curd biscuits

I might be the only one in my family to think so, but I really liked these chewy biscuits that had a distinct lemon flavour. You have to make the lemon curd for this and there will be leftovers – I’ve since realised that lemon curd is fantastic on toast and now my mornings will never be the same. I’ve made the lemon curd so many times since I first tried it!

These keep a little longer than the Dark Chocolate Squares, so if you need something that can last for a couple of days, you could consider these (plus! You get lemon curd as a bonus so it’s almost like you’re making two treats at a go!)

All Butter Almond Shortbread

I’m never going to look at shortbread in the same way! These were easy to make, extremely delicious (especially when they’re still warm) and full of butter. Like seriously, if you want to think you’re eating healthily but still have your shortbread, don’t look at this recipe.

That said, this was a huge hit with my family. Even my grandmother, who’s normally scared of things with too much butter, loved this! This was probably the most popular of the three things that I made from this book.

Overall Thoughts

I found the recipes here to be delicious and fairly easy to follow. The trickiest one were the dark chocolate squares, but I think that is because of my oven, rather than the recipe.

Each recipe is introduced with a tidbit of history (or about the British royal family – apparently, Prince William likes chocolate fridge cake). I liked these little introductions as well as the introductions to the various palaces run by the Historic Royal Palaces. It was fun reading about the history of the different palaces under the Historic Royal Palaces. The only disappointing thing was that the myth about Queen Catherine introducing tea to England was repeated here, but that’s like a couple of lines in an entire book so I can’t complain.

If you like British palaces and your recipes to have trivia, definitely get this little book of recipes. They’re pretty easy to follow and you can impress your family with your newfound knowledge about Britain’s palaces (in London).