Tea Treats (RETIRED)

[HelloMiss]

This set was introduced in 2005 and retired in 2011 with Felicity's archival.

AG description: Your doll can serve these tea treats for two at her afternoon tea! Set the table with two real ceramic plates, cloth napkins, and fancy glasses filled with pretend flummery, Felicity's favorite dessert. On the metal cake plate, carefully place the tower of pretend cakes inside the ring of fruit and tarts.


This set is simply adorable! I LOVE it! The goblets are a pretty shade of seafoam green and have a ruffled rim. The tiny tarts and fruit ring is bright and colorful and I think really makes the set. It might have been cute if these were all individual pieces, but with them molded together it ensures you won't lose any of it. Next there is the cake sitting lovely on a silver cake stand. The cake looks like it is lightly dusted with confectioner's sugar. This set also comes with two white napkins faint white print. The two little dishes that come with this set matches her tea set.

Grade: A+

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[jayamaree]

The cake for this set is a big piece of hollow plastic.

I do love the plates and the cake stand though. The goblets are adorable as well.

B for the set, A for buying it for 16 dollars on cyber monday. I think it was worth that price but i would pay full price for it.

[skukla]

TIP: If you are not a fan of the plastic blob cake tower with bow from this set, the metal cake stand makes the perfect bottom tier for the glass 2 tiered cake stand from Felicity's retired party treats. The ring of fruit / cakes from the new set sits on it perfectly. Some day, when I can once again sink my camera or phone pics and download to photobucket (long story about erased hard drive,) I'll post pics. It works really well!

[ladoyle]

Oct 5, 2010 17:29:50 GMT -5 JSMT said:

Ok Ladies and Gents, what is that thing in Felicity's treats set? The tall conical thing? Is it pastery with powdered sugar? Like doughnuts? Details, please.

And what do you think is in the parfait glasses? Jello? How did they get gelatin to set?

I bought this item as I'm going to set up a tea scene for my Felicity and Elizabeth and when I took it out of the box I thought - what the heck is this thing?! Very pretty, but very mysterious!

And in real life, how tall would it have been? About a foot tall? It is monstrous when you consider the scale. About as long as the girls' torsos. And Felicity, Elizabeth, and Mrs. Manderlay (sp) are going to eat this thing all by themselves? LOL! Not too dainty!

Playthings has the description under Felicity, all her outfits and accessories. It says the triangular piece is actually supposed to be a tower of cakes, surrounded with a ring of fruit and tarts. The glasses contain pretend flummery, which supposedly was Felicity's favorite. It was an oatmeal based type of sweet, soft pudding, which was popular back in the day.

[QNPoohBear]

The tower is cookies (called cakes) and the jello-like substance is actually flummery.
You can find more about colonial foods and recipes in Felicity's section of the History Class and in her cookbook/cooking studio. There's a recipe for raspberry flummery. Gelatin was a popular food back then too. They put fruits in it and molded it into shapes.

[maggiedoll]

In the years before Jell-O (1920sish) gelatin was a great show off food. In order to get gelatin, you need to eat a lot of meat, and for a long time, only wealthy people could eat a lot of meat. For someone to have a lot of gelatin molds showed that you had money. :

Cakes were a common treat, the pyramid in the treats set were a typical wedding decoration. Those pyramids could get pretty high. I pity the kid who tried to snake a cake from the bottom.

[Cakerey Queen]

actually, I have seen these foods replicated in Colonial Williamsburg, so it wasn't surprising for me. Eating these at Felicity's tea lessons would have been the way to teach her gentile manners as a lady in the 18th century. The way they ate at parties and balls, was much different than today- take in mind the fork was a relatively new fangled invention. Sugar was expensive so the cakes and flummery was a way to show off your wealth- hence the tea caddy with Felicity's tea set. Many tea caddies had pride of place- this was the revolutionary era when tea was taxed.

[seejoansew]

This is exactly what the trading card says about her treats:

A Tableful of Treats

Afternoon tea in the colonies meant a trip to the parlor, where the table was set with delicate teacups and plates full of sweet treats. Cookies, called "cakes" were piled high into towers. Felicity might have also enjoyed fruit rings and flummery, a pudding made with lemons or limes, sugar, milk, and eggs.

After tea, the table was cleared. Sometimes the tabletop was then tilted sideways so that the table could be moved or stored along the side of the room, near the matching side chairs, until teatime came again.

Now, don't get me started on her "flummery." There is no way that clear green stuff is made with milk and eggs! And those limes on top. I know key limes are tiny but at 1:3 scale, those limes are about the size of olives! That might be some crazy atomic cocktail or a huge Jell-O shot but I will never believe it is flummery. *end of rant*

[JeanieD]

From Webster's Dictionary: A light kind of food, formerly made of flour or meal;

WordNet Dictionary: flummery - a bland custard or pudding especially of oatmeal

From Wikipedia: Flummery is a sweet soft pudding that is made from stewed fruit and thickened with cornstarch.
Traditional British flummeries were, like porridge, often oatmeal-based and cooked to achieve a smooth and gelatinous texture; sugar and milk were typically added and occasionally orange flower water. The dish is typically bland in nature. The dish gained stature in the 17th century where it was prepared in elaborate moulds. The writer Bill Bryson described flummery as an early form of blancmange in his book "Made in America".
The word also came to mean generally dishes made with milk, eggs and flour in the late seventeenth and during the nineteenth centuries

I certainly didn't know about the oatmeal!

When was this set introduced? Was Ms. Rowland still in charge? I'm guessing not, since the "flummery" so clearly is not authentic. No pun intended.

[QNPoohBear]

Felicity's cookbook recipe for raspberry flummery is completely different. It's made with raspberries and cornstarch but isn't a pudding.

[JSMT]

I really like the plates and flumeries. The cake tower is big, but the plate it sits on is very nice. I don't think it is essential, but it is a lovely addition.

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[melangell]

I got it about a month ago to go with my tea set and newly acquired table and chairs. I agree with previous posters about the tower of tea cakes looking like a hunk of plastic. I just can't get past that, but the other items are very nice and worth the price even ignoring the plastic. The bigger plates and napkins along with the flummery are quite nice and I love the silver cake plate. I would get it while you can from AG. Better to pay their price now rather than e-bay prices later if you change your mind.

[skukla]

THE DESSERT PYRAMID, a decorating staple since the seventeenth century, could be found in one form or another on most colonial tables in the better sort of houses. A careful stacking of fresh fruits, small cakes, or sweetmeats into the shape of a cone or pyramid, this table decoration was meant to be consumed.
www.history.org/foundation/journal/christmas05/food.cfm



I still like this one better (look at the size of the thing- F's is Lilliputian in comparison!):

[skukla]

Hybrid of several sets:






The odd goo goblets are infact historically accurate and would have been set up on salvers or trays, not as glasses next to individual plates:





(from Colonial Williamsburg website.)

And then there's the plastic cake blob tower:

[skukla]

I just received a 2nd Tea Treats set for Mother's Day. I was surprised to see the difference in the smooshed fruit ring, compared to the set I purchased 2 years ago.
Older set on left, new set on right:


Newer set on left, older set on right in remaining pics below:

[scarlettbegonia]

I just got this set on ebay ($19.30!!) & was amazed by the size of the fruit thing---it's HUGE. The cakes blob is eh, but everything else is lovely. I'm so glad to have gotten this for such a steal!

[JustMagicMaria]

I'd give this set a B. The plasticy cake tower is weird. The ring of tarts and fruits is odd. The cake stand is nice and the dishes are pretty. I'm glad I picked this up on cyber Monday for a deal, but I'm glad I didn't pay full price for it.

[samlizziesmom]

I ordered this set new before they retired Felicity a second time.
It comes with a metal cake stand, a ring of fruits and pies, a tower of cookies, and 2 each: napkins, plates, and flummery.

This is an interesting mix of foods from her stories.
The tower of cookies looks like Shrewsbury cookies, so they work for a Christmas scene. The flummery is more summertime, and the ring of fruits is a hangover from her birthday set.
The plates are ceramic; matching her Tea set, napkins are cloth and have a striped pattern to them.

Honestly, except for the ring of food, this set is really cute. I use it a lot. It's a nice addition to a historical collection.

Grade: B