5 Ways to Celebrate National and International Tea Day

December 15th is International Tea Day, British National Tea Day is on April 21st! Are you an avid tea aficionado, or do you simply love to savor a cup before bed? Regardless of your level of love for tea, this guide will have something for you. Ranging from cute, small and simple to social and unusual, there is something on this list to suit everyone!

Happy Tea Day!

Call all of your close friends and invite them over to a tea party! You can ask the guests to bring their own favourite teas to share with others, or you can make going shopping for different teas all part of the fun of the party.

Serve the teas with delicate finger sandwiches and sweet cakes, then just simply enjoy spending the quality time with the people you love. It can be hard to carve in some time to catch up with family and friends, but arranging a fun afternoon tea party is a great excuse to drink tea and have a chat.

Do you love to bake? Then incorporate some tea into your baking. You can take these cakes to work with you and be the office favourite, or you can keep them for yourself and enjoy a nice mid-afternoon treat.

Ingredients:

• 2 Earl Grey Teabags
• 60ml Boiling Water
• 80ml Milk
• 100g Butter
• 2 Eggs
• 160g Caster Sugar
• 190g Self-Raising Flour

Instructions:

1. Preheat the oven to 180C (360F). Grease 12 muffin tins.
2. Rip open the tea bags and pour the contents into a bowl. Add the hot water and leave to brew for 3 minutes.
3. Stir in the milk.
4. Add butter, eggs, sugar and flour. Beat until mixture is pale and creamy. (It may look slightly curdled but that's fine).
5. Divide mixture equally into muffin tins.
6. Bake in the oven for 20-22 minutes.

[Note: This recipe is from Taste. Click here for the recipe and an additional recipe for marmalade icing.]

DId you know that you can grow your own tea at home? Well, you can! You can get 'grow your own tea' kits online from multiple different sources, and you don't even need to be a gardening wizard. As long as you have a sunny windowsill then you can grow your own tea. Many kits come with plant pots and growth pellets, so you don't even need to have your own soil.

Whether you believe that tea leaves can tell the future or not, it's always fun to try your hand at reading your tea leaves (also known as Tasseography), especially as a group. Have a cup of tea (using loose tea) with some friends, a flatmate or a partner then swap cups and try to read each other's futures. It can be fun to write them down and see if any of them come true too.

If you are unsure about where to start with reading tea leaves then there is a Wikihow guide that can be found, if you click here.

A full and extremely comprehensive list of possible signs and what they all mean can be found at Temple Illuminatus, click here to go to the list.

I always seem to stick to my same old Yorkshire Tea, sometimes with a bit of chamomile or vanilla tea, but it would definitely be fun to branch out and try something new. Regardless of whether you usually only drink the one kind or if you have a cupboard stocked full of variety, something new and interesting can always be found.

If you have never had fruit tea before then perhaps try some cinnamon and pear tea leaves. If you are used to your nightly cup of earl grey then try something zany such as jelly and ice cream tea!

If you are usually a party animal and feel as though drinking tea might be too boring, then perhaps you might be interested in some gin and tonic tea?

There is something for everybody out there, go to a shopping market or have a google to see what you can find.

Thank you for reading this article on 5 ways to celebrate International Tea Day. If you try anything from this list then please do comment below on how it went. Please also comment if you have any questions or any other suggestions for how you can celebrate, or if you celebrate every year, tell us how!