A lush feminine & floral affair.

Last year in Singapore, I partnered with Lush Platters to showcase their DIY Pavlova kits. I created a high tea setting focusing on feminine table decor. To me, this meant lots of pink & lilac flowers, soft textures and cream coloured table linen.

For food, I also cooked my favourite caramel slice; whilst experimenting with a passionfruit blueberry layered cake and served some croissants with sweet spreads and fruits.

As with all high teas, this was best accompanied with a glass of chilled rosé. Here’s how to recreate it at your home.

Decor

Colour Palette

With all my table settings, I start with a colour palette in mind. For this high tea I choose lilac, pink, peach and cream. This helps me choose what table linen, flowers, decorative items and sometimes influences what I choose to wear! Here’s how I incorporated colour:

Lilac: Statement flowers (ie. delphiniums)
Pink: Table runner, key flowers (ie. mix of roses, carnations and artificial peonies)
Peach: Table runner and supporting flowers (ie. carnations).
Cream: Table linen & candles.

Table Linen

Layering table linen adds extra colour and texture. For this setting, we only needed 4 chairs, so I decided to cover 1/3 of the table.

I used a plain cream table cloth as the base and draped pink and peach table runners on top. The pink and peach ‘table runners’ are actually scarves I bought at the market for $10! For the napkins, I kept them in beige as there was a lot of colour going on.

Flowers

Using both fresh and artificial flowers provide you with more creativity… whilst also being budget friendly.

For the draping table linen, I wanted to create a ‘waterfall’ of flowers. I didn’t really want to waste and spend too much on fresh flowers, so I used artificial flowers for this part. I had a bunch of artificial flowers left over from my rooftop flower wall installation, and safety pinned them individually to the table linen.

For the table jars, I used fresh roses and carnations. Keeping in colour theme with pinks and peach coloured blooms.

For the table garland, I added a few branches of eucalyptus branches.

Lastly, I added edible flowers on the cake. The pink carnations on the cake were not edible, so I wrapped foil around the stem to add them to the cake for further decoration.

Additional Decorative Items

Gold candle holders
Candlesticks
Flameless candles
Safety pins (needed to attach the artificial flowers to the draping table runner)
Cake and dessert stands of various heights.

Setting up

START with the draping table linen covering 1/3 of the table (2 opposite seats). First with the cream, then peach and pink runners on top. Like a shape of a ‘T’, add another table runner horizontally across the table.
PLACE the statement flowers in vases on top of the draping linen so it holds the fabric. I featured these beautiful purple delphiniums and had another smaller vase for roses, carnations and eucalyptus branches.
SAFETY pin the artificial flowers on top of the pink table runner.
LAY eucalyptus leaves across the table and add small jars of flowers.
ADD the final touches like candles, placemats, plates, cutlery and napkins.

Food

DIY Pavlova Kit by Lush Platters

Lush Platters is a luxury food artistry catering company in Singapore. They are the pioneers of grazing tables and cheese platters. You can order anything from gourmet sandwiches, cheese wheel cakes to desserts. It’s the perfect dinner party solution when you want something pretty, healthy and delicious.

These DIY Pavlova kits were a seasonal item. They came with meringue, raspberry coulis, whipped cream and fresh fruit. All you needed to do is assemble.

Unfortunately on their website as of today (26th May 2022) they do not stock it anymore. But keep an eye out for future stock!

Caramel Slice

High tea has to have some sort of chocolate component to it! So I made my Nonna Lizzie caramel slice.

Full recipe here, but here is an overview:

Base: Mix the following ingredients and bake for 20 mins at 180 deg. 150g of butter biscuits (crushed), 1 cup desiccated coconut, 175g butter (pastry butter preferred), 1/3 cup vegetable oil.
Caramel: Mix the following in a pan; 2 tablespoons of maple syrup, 1 can of condensed milk (standard 395g can). Then pour on base and bake for 10 minutes.
Chocolate: Melt the following then pour onto caramel; 200g milk chocolate, 2 tablespoons of coconut oil.

It’s addictive and a massive calorie bomb but worth every bite!

Passionfruit Blueberry Cake

Ok this was an experiment that was almost a disaster…all I can say is thank god for edible flowers!

I wanted to try and bake a multi-layered cake which was quite ambitious, considering cake is not my forte. I used two packets of Betty Crocker Vanilla Cake Mix. One with mixed fresh passionfruit and the second with blueberries.

For icing, I also used a pre-made vanilla icing mixture from Betty Crocker.

If you’re up for an experiment, here’s what I did:

Bake the 2 round vanilla cakes. Adding passionfruit to one cake mix and blueberries to the other.
Cool and refrigerate for at least an hour or two. Cut the cakes in half, giving you 4 round cakes.
Mix in passionfruit pulp with the vanilla icing.
Assemble the layered cake, adding icing in between each layer.

Read this article to avoid the mistakes I encountered along the way.

I loved putting together this gorgeous tablescape together. It was an abundance of flowers, feminine colours and sweet delicious food. I hope this inspires your next high tea at home.

Let me know if you have any questions, happy styling! xx

High Tea with Lush Platters