Afternoon Tea at Moggerhanger Park, Bedfordshire

Recently Ian and I have been trying to make more time for us. It's not an easy thing to do when you have children, and I've never been keen on leaving the boys with a babysitter for a night, so instead of date nights we have date days. Last Sunday we went to Moggerhanger Park in Bedfordshire for afternoon tea.

Moggerhanger Park is a Grade 1 listed Georgian Historic House set in 33 acres of parkland and woodland. It has recently undergone extensive refurbishment and is a prestigious venue for weddings and other private events, as well as public events that are held in the house and grounds throughout the year. You can find Moggerhanger Park on Twitter and Facebook. 

'The Old Kitchen' is Moggerhanger Park's cafe and is situated in the Main House. It's open from Tuesday through to Sunday from 10am to 4pm serving drinks, cakes, lunches, seasonal specials and afternoon tea. Everything is prepared on site and the ingredients are sourced locally. You can sit in the cafe where there is music in the background or you can sit in the courtyard. As it was such a lovely, sunny day we chose to sit outside and enjoy the warmth.

We had originally booked afternoon tea for the previous weekend, but me being as forgetful as I am had failed to mention that I'm vegan, so we rebooked to give the kitchen a chance to create something suitable. All of the staff we spoke to were really friendly and accommodating, particularly Laura who made sure that all of our requirements were noted - and duly humoured Ian as he cracked his jokes.

The afternoon tea stand contained a plate of freshly prepared sandwiches, with prawn cocktail for Ian and vegan cheese and tomato for me, a selection of cakes including ginger stem cake, rocky road and flapjack, and of course no afternoon tea would be complete without freshly baked scones, jam and clotted cream. All of the cakes and the scones were vegan - I had my scone laden with jam while Ian went for the proper jam and cream combo. 

Eating out as a vegan is never an issue for me, but I'm often left with sorbet as an option when it comes to pudding as there aren't many places that have come up with vegan dessert options. So I was really impressed with the selection of cakes that were on offer. The scones were really delicious too, with just the right texture and we could tell that a lot of care had gone into preparing our afternoon tea.

Combined with the relaxed environment we had such a wonderful afternoon, I'm sure we will be heading back to Moggerhanger Park for another visit soon. (Oh, and in case you're wondering why there's no photos of Ian - he wouldn't let me take one, but that is his hand in the photo above)! 

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With thanks to Moggerhanger Park for our complimentary afternoon tea.