How to Host a Star Wars Afternoon Tea Party
Most people don’t associate Star Wars as a foodie film. In fact, there are only a handful of instances where you actually see anyone eating or drinking within the Star Wars prequels and sequels.One of the things I like doing during my immersive movie events is eating and drinking the same food as the characters, like in Downton Abbey or Anne of Green Gables. Where was I going to find blue milk??
The thing is, I’m a pretty big Star Wars fan. I will make exceptions for the best movie ever made. While the more mainstream and widely accepted date is “May 4th”, May 25th is when A New Hope (episode 4) was released back in 1977. To me, this is a very significant day and I celebrate it every year!
For this year, instead of just watching A New Hope in my Star Wars jammies, why not watch it while having a complete 4 course meal based on all things Star Wars? I knew I couldn’t handle this myself, so I had to ask Xak what he thought.
Me: Hey, what do you think about us having a Star Wars tea?
Me asking Xak what he thought about us having a Star Wars tea
Xak: Yes.
I guess that settles it.
Planning the Star Wars Tea Menu
Since there’s not too much to pull from from the movies, we decided we would come up with our own list of food, but try to make it as “Star Wars” as possible. After much consideration, we came up with the following for our tea menu:
Soup
- Potato and Leek
Amuse bouche
- Imperial Fruit Badges
Savories
- Death Star Quiche
- TIE Advanced Cucumber Sandwiches
- Princess Leia Pork and Mushroom Puff Pastry Swirls
Scones
- Mustafar Savory Scones with Butter
Dessert
- Tatooine Twin Suns Banana Pudding
- Star Wars Lemon Cakes
- Molasses Chewys (Wookiee Cookies)
This would either be really awesome, or really awful depending on how things turned out.
One thing’s for sure, we’re all gonna be a lot
-Han Solo, if he was at our afternoon tea and not in the death star trash compactorthinnerfatter
Potato and Leek Soup
Recipe Used: Tea Time Magazine Potato Leek Soup
I admit, this has no ties to Star Wars at all, but I’ve been looking for an excuse to have this soup again. 😄 During tea time, I serve lighter soups: no beef stews or gamjatangs for tea. At the tea rooms I’ve visited, I’ve had similar light soups like tomato bisque, baked potato soup, and vichyssoise (a chilled potato and leek soup). Since I anticipated our Star Wars tea wouldn’t be ready until close to dinner time, it seemed like a good idea to include a soup course to make a slightly more substantial meal.
The soup is actually very easy to make. You simply melt some butter, cook the leeks (white part only, not the leaves), and then add in the potatoes, chicken broth, water, and salt.
Then, you do other stuff (like making all the other things for your tea party) while it boils and the potatoes become tender and easy to pierce with a fork. The cream goes in last, and then you use an immersion blender to make everything silky and smooth.
I like to serve my potato leek soup with chives on top, but Xak had taken them over to his station for his scones. I decided to throw on some dill instead. Neither of us ate it, but it makes it look better than just naked soup. Overall, what a delicious soup to have at tea!
Imperial Fruit Badge
Recipe Used: None (it’s just fruit 😄)
Imperial Officers have different colors to represent their rank. Typically you’ll see some combination of blue, red, and yellow on an insignia they wear with their uniform.
I started thinking about what fruit fit these colors: blueberries, strawberries or watermelon, and pineapple or mango. After filling almost an entire shopping cart with fruit, I then realized… how do I serve this? It would be great to have some Chantilly cream as the base, or maybe even a rectangular pavlova? Unfortunately, there was no time for any of that. My cooking schedule already had Xak and I double booked for multiple items. What I did find in my cabinet were rectangular Kedem biscuits and graham crackers, so that would have to do.
After realizing the Kedem biscuits were quite thin and I couldn’t fit all my fruit, I abandoned the idea of having a Grand Moff Tarkin badge, and frantically looked up who 4 pieces of strawberries and 4 pieces of blueberries would be: General Veers!
This is the guy who blows up the Hoth base with the walker that’s “too strong for blasters.” He’s pretty significant right? Regardless, the unintentional General Veers fruit badge would have to do. 😄
Death Star Quiche
Recipe Used: RecipeTin Eats Mini Quiche Recipe, RecipeTin Eats Quiche Crust Recipe
One of the best parts of getting married is putting all sorts of specialty items on a registry that you’ve been wanting but can’t quite justify buying it yourself. One of these items included a tartlet pan which is perfect for individually sized quiches.
Previously, we’ve made mini quiches in muffin tins, but this time we wanted to finally used the baking tin we were kindly gifted from our wedding. There’s no better time to use your expensive bakeware than for a Star Wars tea. The last time we served quiches was for my parents’ first afternoon tea where we had quiche lorraines (my favorite) made with storebought pie pastry. This time, Xak wanted to make his own pastry crust from scratch.
The night before our tea, Xak worked on creating some homemade shortcrust pastry dough out of flour, salt, butter, and water. After rolling it out, he put it in the fridge to chill for the night while we worked on other items.
The next morning, Xak took out the chilled dough and rolled it out and put it within our pastry tin. The amount of dough is enough for one whole quiche, or up to four individual quiches which is perfect for us (2 each). After filling the tins and cutting off excess pastry around the edges, it was time to blind bake the quiche crusts, before adding the delicious Quiche Lorraine filling of eggs, shallots, shredded gruyere cheese, and yummy yummy bacon.
Once the quiches were baked, we said a silent word of prayer before popping them out of the tin and onto a wire rack to cool. Luckily, they didnt’ collapse or crumble! Since we had some extra egg mixture, we also made a few crustless quiches in rammekins to try out for any future gluten free guests.
In order to make this Star Wars themed, it was important to add a little bit of garnishes. After some thought, we decided on adding a small cucumber slice (from the sandwiches I was making) and a black olive to represent where the Death Star’s superlaser is fired from, along with a dill stem to indicate the entrance surrounding the space station where ships dock.
TIE Advanced Cucumber Sandwiches
Recipe Used: Spend With Pennies Cucumber Sandwiches
Cucumber sandwiches are a staple for us. We’ve made them for almost every tea, so a Star Wars tea is no exception. However… I didn’t just want a regular cucumber sandwich on my three tiered tray. I had to figure out how to make it more… Star Wars.
I’ve been lucky to have friends and family gift me a lot of Star Wars themed kitchen items over the years. One of these gifts includes sandwich cutters: a TIE Advanced (Darth Vader’s ship seen in A New Hope) and the Millennium Falcon! I was eager to try these out. Usually I cut sandwiches in rectangles or triangles. These definitely wouldn’t be traditional, but who cares?! It would be perfect for a Star Wars tea!
I’ve used the same cucumber sandwich recipe now for years, however in addition to the new shape, I also had decided on using an English cucumber which is much longer than a regular cucumber. The taste seems similar, but I seemed to be able to cut thinner slices of cucumber, which I like. After assembly the sandwiches, it was time to test out our TIE Advanced cutter.
The cutter worked great! The only slight issue I ran into was that the bread was a little on the small side, but it didn’t matter. They still looked pretty cool and would certainly taste delicious!
Princess Leia Pork and Mushroom Puff Pastry Swirls
Recipe Used: TeaTime Magazine Pork and Mushroom Puff Pastry Swirls
While this tea included recipes we were already familiar with, we always like to try new things at every afternoon tea. Typically our savories course includes 3 sandwiches or 2 sandwiches and 1 baked item like a Yorkshire Pudding, empanada, or Cornish Pasty. Although we had already decided on the Death Star Quiche, this seemed like a fun way to incorporate Princess Leia’s famous Danish/Cinnamon Roll hairstyle which is so iconic from A New Hope!
Xak and I decided to split the savory responsibilities for this one: I’d handle all the filling, and he could handle the puff pastry portion since he’s much more at ease with rolling out dough than I am.
The amount of ingredients made me a little nervous. This was going to be new and if it failed, I didn’t think we had enough eggs to whip up some quick egg salad sandwiches or deviled eggs. I desperately hoped the Force (the Forks?) would be with us for this one.
The first step to this recipe involved putting the mushrooms in the oven for about 25 minutes. This allows the mushrooms to release all the moisture. I guess having soggy mushrooms could be bad for the rise of the puff pastry? (I’m not Paul Hollywood, what do I know?) 😄
While the mushrooms baked, I chopped the other ingredients and started cooking the ground pork. I do not use ground pork very often outside of meatballs and certain chilis. Once the mushrooms were ready, those got tossed into the filling and then cooled down while I called Xak to take over with the pastry part.
Unfortunately, the amount of filling we made was appropriate for a 17 oz package of puff pastry, which is NOT what they sell at my grocery stores. Needless to say, we had quite a bit of extra filling which we tried to stuff into the pastry and quickly realized this was a bad idea. Overstuffing can be great, but not with puff pastry!
Luckily, Xak was able to cut the pastry into equal pieces and put them in the oven to bake. Once they got golden brown, I brushed them with a honey mustard mix of spicy brown mustard and honey and then placed them on our savories tier.
You can’t really see the swirl inside, but trust me, they really did resemble Leia’s hairstyle and they were delicious too!
Mustafar Scones
Recipe Used: TeaTime Magazine May/June Cozy Corner’s Smoked Paprika and Chive Scones by Karen Rose Smith
A new issue of TeaTime Magazine comes out every two months. It’s one of the most exciting days of the month because there are always several recipes I will bookmark with future teas in mind. Most recently, I was reading the latest issue and saw in the Cozy Corner section an author, Karen Rose Smith, whose tea room themed books I enjoy greatly. This time, she was sharing a specific savory scone recipe for Smoked Paprika and Chive scones.
When Xak had his turn reading the magazine, he was very excited at the idea of a savory scone. Although Xak’s cream scones are almost as mandatory at every tea like cucumber sandwiches, we can make exceptions for Star Wars tea. After all, the idea of a reddish scone could represent something like… the red salt of Crait (from The Last Jedi), or the burning lava of Mustafar where Vader’s castle is located. Perfect!
Since Xak is “Scone” in Scones and Doughns, it was natural that he would be the sole creator of the scone course. Although I was busy working on other items, I was interested in watching him chop the chives and grate the frozen butter. The dough was also shaped like a log, which was new for me. Usually, Xak uses a nice fluted cutter on rolled out dough, but this recipe required him to cut the log into slices. Interesting… 🤔
The scones were definitely different since they weren’t the type you would put clotted cream or fruit jam. It did taste pretty good, although I couldn’t really pinpoint a specific flavor. Since we put butter on it, it was almost like a flavored biscuit you might have at dinner.
Tatooine Twin Suns Banana Pudding
Recipe Used: AllRecipes The Best Banana Pudding
Disclaimer: AllRecipes calls it that name, not me. However… I don’t think they’re wrong.
Recently, I went to an ice cream shop and the flavor of the month was Southern Banana Pudding Ice Cream. I’m a Chocolate Chip Cookie Dough person and I rarely stray, however this actually piqued my interest. Banana Pudding is always a satisfying dessert, but it’s never been in my top 5. However, the promise of real Nila wafers in my ice cream was enough for me to ignore Chocolate Chip Cookie Dough. This time.
The ice cream was surprisingly great! It actually tasted like banana pudding which shocked me. It made me realize I really wanted actual banana pudding. I haven’t made this in over a decade, but from what I remember, the recipe was pretty simple since you don’t even have to cook anything.
Although I would have LOVED to make my own pudding from scratch (on the stove) and make my own on vanilla wafers, realistically I didn’t have the time. So, easy mode pudding it would be for Star Wars tea.
It may be surprising to see vanilla instant pudding in the ingredients versus banana, but that’s because vanilla tastes less artificial. Since it’s instant pudding, you basically put it in a bowl with milk, whisk it until it sets and then add the condensed milk, and vanilla.
The entire tub of Cool Whip gets plopped into the bowl to be folded into the mixture. Note: The recipe calls for “1 12 oz container” of Cool Whip. In the stores, an entire container of Cool Whip is now 8 ounces!! This recipe is clearly from pre-shrinkflation era 😄
Once your vanilla pudding mixture is complete, it’s time to actually make it “banana” pudding by cutting some bananas. The recipe calls for 14 small bananas which is ridiculous, so I ended up using almost an entire bunch of normal sized bananas.
The vanilla wafers go on the bottom layer, then the cut bananas, and then the pudding mixture. Then you repeat until run out of room.
So now that I was finally able to fulfill my craving of banana pudding, I needed to make sure it was Star Wars-ified for our tea. I decided to use the shot glasses from when we made gluten free Dirt and do the same layering as the big casserole dish: one wafer, one banana, one small scoop of pudding, repeat. However, for the very top, I wanted to pay tribute to one of the iconic scenes in all of Star Wars: binary sunset featuring the twin suns of Tatooine (and some of John Williams’ best music)
Although, my pudding doesn’t fully match Luke’s binary sunset (I swear there’s a scene in one of the films where the second sun is partially obscured), but you can see where I’m going with this, right? A for effort!
Star Wars Lemon Cakes
Recipe Used: TeaTime Magazine Mini Lemon Bundt Cakes
Lemon is one of those perfect flavors for afternoon tea. I usually stick to making lemon bars, but sometimes I even have the lemon as the tea flavor itself. So refreshing!
I’ve previously made these lemon bundt cakes before, and they turned out great! I even bought a mini bundt cake pan the first time I made this. However, for Star Wars tea, we were going to do something even cooler. I was given some wonderful William Sonoma Star Wars cakelet pans (I told you, I get the best gifts).
Although I’m the one who has made these in the past, Xak took over lemon cake duties since I was busy with the other desserts. However, Xak put me to work zesting lemons while he handled making the cake batter. Zesting the lemons took no time at all, and I was able to quickly move on to the other desserts.
Once Xak was ready with the batter, he paused briefly to read up on how to grease these pans. Normally, I use a ton of butter on my bundt cake pans and the cake will slide out. However, since these Star Wars pans have some pretty delicate features, it was best to read up on what was recommended from the people who made them. The recommendation called for baking spray with flour in it (which we have) and then tapping excess flour out of the tins which Xak diligently followed.
Once the cakes were baked, I anxiously watched as Xak tipped over the tins expecting the worst. We had actually baked two batches (just in case). One turned out to be more on “the Dark Side”, but surprisingly recognizable Star Wars characters were laying on the wire racks!
Molasses Chewys (Wookiee Cookies)
Recipe Used: Gimme Some Oven Chewy Ginger Molasses Cookies
For the last dessert, I wanted a cookie. When you think of tea, you might think of shortbread or a ginger biscuit (or maybe that’s just me). Ginger snaps are one of my favorites things to make, not just for tea, but for life! However… when you think of Star Wars, even someone who’s never watched the films will probably recognize Darth Vader and Chewbacca. “Chewy” is Chewbacca’s nickname. The cool thing is he has shades of brown like a ginger snap. However, his name isn’t Snapbacca 🤣. To make this even more Star Wars-y, I decided to look up chewy ginger cookies and settled on one that looked quite tasty.
After reading the recipe, I realized I needed to allow the dough to chill for at least two hours! This meant starting the recipe the night before (just like Xak’s quiche dough).
Not surprisingly, the ingredients are pretty much identical to a ginger snap recipe. I wasn’t quite clear though on which ingredient would make the cookie not have the distinctive snap that I love. The recipe also seemed to be very much what I was used to with snaps: dry ingredients in one bowl, cream the sugar and butter in another and then add an egg.
This was all pretty routine. The recipe then called for molasses (just like a ginger snap) and then slowly incorporating the flour mixture with the wet ingredients until you formed a dough. The dough smelled lovely, although I was still wondering if these would be Chewbaccas or Snapbaccas. I put the dough in the fridge to chill until the next day.
On the day of our tea party, Xak offered to take the chilled dough, form it into balls with a scoop, roll in sugar, and then bake the (hopefully) chewys. They actually turned out… chewy! To make this even more Star Wars themed, I asked Xak to think of how we could replicate Chewy’s very recognizable bandolier. He did not disappoint.
After drawing a quick template on a piece of wax paper and then sifting powdered sugar over the Chewys, I was so pleased with the end result! (Insert Wookiee roar of approval here)
The Picard Earl Grey Tea
Apologies in advance to any angry Star Wars fans 😄
When I visited Laura’s Tea Room back in December, Xak chose the Picard Black Earl Grey blend. It was so tasty that we ended up buying some while we were there. There’s not that much tea in this tiny packet, so we like to reserve it for special occasions. Star Wars Tea is 100% a special occasion! While I could have done something like “Hoth Chocolate” or “Dagobah Green Tea” (I don’t know, I’m just making these up!), as a fan of both Star Wars and Star Trek, I think this is perfect!
Star Wars Tea Party Time
This party took a long time to prepare. There were about 4 timers for differently food items continuously going off throughout the course of two days. But, we were so excited to finally eat the fruit (badges) of our labor!
We turned on A New Hope and dove into our soup, our fruit, then the savories, scones, and desserts.
This is truly the best afternoon tea we’ve ever had! 😊 What an excellent Star Wars day!
Bonus #1: The Leftover Tea
With all the food that we made, you can imagine how many leftovers we had. The next couple of days were AWESOME! For breakfast, I was able to eat crustless Death Star quiche and Star Wars lemon cakes, for lunch, I had leftover potato leek soup, cucumber sandwiches (no TIE Fighters), pork puff pastry swirl, and Mustafar scone, and during coffee time, I had molasses chewys. Star Wars tea just gives on giving and giving 😊
Bonus #2: A Pretty Comprehensive List of All the Times You See Food or Drink in Star Wars (1-6)
It took a lot of restraint for me to not add quotes and gifs throughout this entire entry 😄 Instead, I kept them all in my head. However, it’s really important for me to share all the instances that anyone ate or drank something in Star Wars episodes 1-6.
Note: this is completely from memory and if I’m missing one, PLEASE let me know via comment or by emailing me.
The Phantom Menace
- Obi-wan/Quigon drinking on the Trade Federation ship while they wait for the Viceroy
- Jar Jar stealing a frog like creature from a street vendor and spitting it out, landing in Sebulba’s soup
- Anakin getting Qui-Gon a pallie from Jira’s stall and Qui Gon being super obvious by “accidentally” showing off his “laser sword”
- Dinner at Anakin’s house made up of Qui-Gon’s meal rations + Jar Jar stealing apples with his tongue while Anakin confronts Qui-Gon about his “laser sword”
Attack of the Clones
- Dex’s Diner on Coruscant where Obi-Wan orders a cup of Jawa Juice and learns about Kamino
- Obi-Wan watching the Clones eat in their mess hall during his tour of Kamino
- R2 getting Anakin and Padme some food from the line on the refugee ship and being told NO DROIDS … by a droid
- Anakin and Padme eating breakfast in Naboo and Anakin Force steals a pear to cut it as he explains “aggressive negotiations”
- The Meadow Picnic where no food is actually shown 🤔
- On Tattoine, Beru prepares a tray of drinks for Anakin, Padme, Owen, and Cliegg (although no one actually drinks anything)
- Padme walking in with a tray that remains untouched while Anakin screams “IT’S ALL OBI-WAN’S FAULT”
- There are also some deleted Naboo scenes of Padme’s family featuring food, but I guess just like the business on Cato Neimoidia, it doesn’t, doesn’t count.
Revenge of the Sith
- ??? I’m blanking on this. Do they eat anything in this entire movie??
A New Hope
- The famous blue milk scene where Luke has lunch with Beru and Owen (including unidentifiable food that just gets pushed around the plate)
- Beru making some sort of cabbage soup on the Lars homestead when Owen asks where Luke went
- Cantina scene where Luke orders a drink and then promptly gets harrassed by Ponda Baba and Dr. Evazan
Empire Strikes Back
- Yoda stealing a bite of Luke’s rations and spitting them out in disgust and screaming “HOW YOU GET SO BIG EATING FOOD OF THIS KIND?”
- Yoda proudly serving the soup he made in his hut while Luke takes a taste, makes a face, and then proceeds to get more
- Vader inviting Leia/Han to join him (and Boba Fett) in a Cloud City Dining Room or Banquet Hall (ok there’s no food here, but it looks like it would be some fancy dinner)
Return of the Jedi
- Jabba eating frogs while he excitedly watches people getting consumed by the Rancor
- R2 serving drinks on Jabba’s sand barge
- Leia giving Wicket “something to eat” so he’ll trust her instead of jab her with his spear
- Chewy “always thinking with his stomach” tries to grab some dead animal and then getting everyone caught into the trap made by the Ewoks
