Red, white, and blueberry teatime

Last Thursday, I had my "Grow Group" girls over for tea. We all really bonded while doing a church-based discipleship program together a couple of years ago, and even though we've long been finished, Beth, Paige, Kristi, and I continue to meet up on a regular basis just to check in with each other and see how life is going. I forgot to take very many photos, but Kristi (the tallest of the four) always manages to get a selfie so that we can at least commemorate the occasion.

As you can see, I'm still into my "patriotic summer of 2026" décor, so I decided the foods should follow suit. We had chicken salad served in tiny glasses, star-shaped cucumber cream sandwiches, a Boursin and mozzarella breakfast casserole, blueberry scones, fruit skewers, and gluten-free chocolate cake with chocolate icing from the Publix bakery.

We all agreed the cake is fabulous, especially the cream filling and the ganache, and cut into thin slices, it can work on a tea table.

I also made star-shaped sugar cubes using a star-shaped plastic candy mold I found at Michaels years ago. These are so easy to make. Just pour a cup of sugar into a bowl and add a tablespoon or two of water and mix until the sugar has the consistency of wet sand. Then scoop into the mold, pack down, let sit overnight, and voila, you have sugar cubes when you wake up the next morning. I've also made these with heart-shaped molds and tinted them pink for Valentine's Day.

Beth said she thought these gluten-free blueberry-and-white-chocolate scones were the best yet. Yay!

They also enjoyed the Ginger Sweet Peach Tea from Tiesta Tea that I recently reviewed here, and I was happy that they're always willing to try any tea I serve them and are turning into quite the tea connoisseurs. We used new silver napkin rings and teaspoons thanks to a recent gift from my friend Kathy. I was grateful for the silver touches!

I wish I'd thought to get a few more photos, but I was so excited to see "the girls" that I didn't worry about photography very much. And really, who can feel bad about that!