If you’ve inherited a set of delicate tea cups or demitasse cups, don’t leave them in the back of the closet. They’re meant to be used and admired.

The cups are long out of fashion, but you can bring them back. Start a tradition: An annual or bi-annual tea party.

You don’t have to fuss: Just serve tea, coffee and cookies and invite as many friends as you have cups. The most laborious part of entertaining will be washing the cups.

What if they break?

Yes, it happens. But unless you want to sell the cups to a collector, they serve no purpose in deep storage. Nice things are meant to be used. Cups will break no matter how careful you try to be. Use them and enjoy them.

(Our grandmother broke several of her own lovely cups. She glued them together and put them on display in the china cabinet. But she left more than enough intact, including the one in the photo.)

We’ve become very fond of these Belgian imports.

You’ll only find a few of the company’s numerous cookie varieties in the U.S., but that’s plenty for a tea party.
The selection includes Almond Florentines, Almond Thins, Belgian Chocolate Thins (shown in the photo, covered in dark, milk and white chocolate), Butter Crisps, Butter Waffles, Chocolate Covered Biscuits With Crispy Rice and Ginger Thins, among others.

You don’t have to go out of your way to find them, either: We get ours at the local supermarket.
Jules Destrooper was a trader in the second half of the 19th century. He imported spices from Africa and the Far East, and also used them to develop delicate cookie recipes. Biscuiterie Jules Destrooper was founded in 1886.

For a product with a large production, distributed worldwide, the cookies are all natural and of very high quality—better than a lot of bakery cookies. While new recipes have been developed by the fourth generation of Destroopers, the recipes for the original cookies have never been changed.

The box empties almost instantly at THE NIBBLE. Here’s the company website, which has some really interesting recipes for savory appetizers and hors d’oeuvre with a cookie base.