Stained Glass Cucumber Tea Sandwiches

If tea parties and little nibbles are your thing, you will love these stained glass cucumber tea sandwiches. I call them stained glass tea sandwiches because the cucumbers that poke through the center of the sandwiches looks like stained glass and are so beautiful.

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Total Time: 25 minutes

If you are not familiar with tea sandwiches, they are little sandwiches that you serve, well at tea time, but you can also serve these little bites anytime you want a light meal. I like making light sandwiches like this in the summer when it is too hot for a heavy meal and I do not want to cook or drink hot tea.

There are many variations of tea sandwiches but this one uses cucumbers, cream cheese and chives. The cucumbers and chives I grow in my garden so that is why I chose this combination. I only had to purchase white sandwich bread and cream cheese to make them.

When you are making these cucumber tea sandwiches, you will be following these basic steps:

Cut your bread with various sized cookie cutters.

If you want a sandwich that is not too small (like I did here) then you will want to find a regular sized cookie cutter for the shape of your sandwich (circle, star, heart...). I then used a smaller cookie cutter to cut little holes out of the top of the sandwich so the cucumbers can be seen.

For reference, each sandwich that I made came from 2 slices of bread (top and bottom) with the center cut out. If you prefer even smaller sandwiches, you could definitely choose smaller cookie cutters for the base shape of the sandwich.

Alternately, you could just cut the crusts off of your sandwich bread and then cut the sandwich into quarters. From there you can use small cookie cutters to cut out a piece of the top slice of bread to expose the cucumbers.

Let your cream cheese come to room temperature.

You want it so that it is soft and spreadable. Once the cream cheese is soft, add your chives to the cream cheese and mix well.

Slice your cucumbers very thin.

You want to slice your cucumbers as thin as you can. They do not need to be perfect and you can pick the best ones for your sandwich.

Start assembling your sandwiches.

Spread your cream cheese mixture on one slice of the cut out bread shape you are working with and then add your sliced cucumbers. Place the top of the sandwich on top of the cucumbers and add that to your serving plate. I like to use a cake stand to make them stand out more.

Now I think these cute tea sandwiches really deserve a spot outdoors in nice weather. I really love using them as afternoon tea sandwiches. I will make these and my peach galette and place them outside under a cloche (to keep the bugs out) on our patio table for when people are coming in from the pool and want something small to eat.

It is nice to have some food waiting for you when you are done swimming. It is also nice that these tea sandwiches are light and refreshing thanks to the cucumbers.

They are very versatile. Use them as an afternoon sandwich or use them at a tea party as tea sandwiches. No matter what you use them for, these cucumber sandwiches are delish.

These little sandwiches are very easy to make too. One suggestion so there is no food waste is to save the cut out bread pieces in a plastic bag for a quick breakfast of eggs in a hole. Since the bread you cut your shapes out of will have a hole in the center, just place this bread on to a frying pan and drop an egg in the center of it to cook.

Super simple and no waste!

More Recipes With Cucumbers:

• Refrigerator pickles (3 flavors to choose)
• Cucumber Aqua Fresca
• Greek Cucumber Salad