Smoked Salmon Tea Sandwiches

These dainty little tea sandwiches were delightful at my friend Jackie's bridal shower and though very simple, would make the British Royals proud.

At first when I looked at the recipe I had to do a double take on the butter for a couple of reasons: 1) 1 teaspoon per slice of bread?? and 2) unsalted?  Well, after some thought, the reason for the latter was clear to me - smoked salmon is salty so you don't need any from the butter, too.  As for the entire teaspoon of butter on each bread slice...I just couldn't bring myself to do that.  When I researched the rationale, tea sandwiches are usually heavily buttered because it supposedly provides structure for the bread.  For the calories though, I was willing to take my chances and am happy to report that I was able to get away with using about 1/2 teaspoon per slice of bread.

If you're making a lot of sandwiches like I did (13 in total!), you will probably want to do it assembly line style buttering all the bread first, then moving on to the cream cheese, then finally the salmon and cutting.  After taking a couple sandwiches all the way through from start to finish I realized it was a mess and not so effective since handling the salmon made my hands pretty slimy.

I'm a little anal and actually weighed out my cream cheese and salmon as I put them on my bread slices (mostly because I didn't want to run out before I had made enough sandwiches because I bought just enough!).  If you're trying to stretch your dollar, you can get away with using less of both (about 0.8 oz cream cheese and 1.3 oz salmon seemed okay to me).  The end product will not suffer as there is plenty of flavor to go around.  Oh, and I couldn't resist but to add fresh cracked pepper and a few squeezes of lemon juice to brighten the flavor.

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Smoked Salmon Tea Sandwiches

Photo Credit: Emily H.

Ingredients:

• 2 small slices bread (I used white and wheat sandwich breads for variety and less waste on cutting since the edges are straight instead of round on top)
• 1 teaspoons unsalted butter, softened
• 1 tablespoon minced fresh dill
• 1 ounce low fat cream cheese, softened
• 1.3-2 ounces smoked salmon
• Lemon juice (optional)
• Pepper (optional)

Directions:

1. Spread one teaspoon of butter on one side of each slice of bread. 
2. Mix the dill into the cream cheese. If desired, add a few squeezes of lemon juice and freshly ground pepper to taste.  Spread the cream cheese on the buttered sides of bread. 
3. Layer the salmon on the cream cheese on one slice of bread, and cover with other bread slice. 
4. Cut the crusts off the sandwich and then on the diagonals to create four triangles.

Source: Slightly modified from About.com