A Mad Hatters Afternoon Tea at The Sanderson Hotel, London

Mara and I spent a festive day of fun in London on Wednesday.

We went to all our favourite spots, checked out the Christmas lights, had a few cupcakes along the way, shopped up a storm...and had the most wonderful Afternoon Tea! 

Mara had booked it as a surprise.  She had told me I would have to be brave as it was going to be slightly experimental, I'm a bit of a fussy eater so I was getting slightly worried...

but I needn't have worried because we had the most delicious feast that wasn't remotely scary (apart from the salmon sandwich for a non fish fan like myself)! 

The Sanderson is a lavish boutique 5* hotel, and if you want to spend the night here it will typically set you back about £500! As we walked through the doors we were surrounded by fabric draping all the walls and there were quite a few cool seating areas in the foyer that we thought we'd test out! like these giant lips...

and this hanging pod! 

Afterwards we were whisked through into the beautiful courtyard garden where our experience really began! 

Here's a closer look at the menu, the rainbow coloured finger sandwiches sounded pretty inventive! 

and all the little treats had been designed with Alice in Wonderland in mind.

We started off with some non alcholic cocktails - lychee lemonade for me...

and a cranberry and strawberry concoction for Mar.  They were seriously tasty.

Next up, the rainbow platter arrived! and despite my earlier worries about how tasty spinach bread would be, you couldn't actually taste the flavourings they were just used to change the colour.  The turkey and cranberry sandwich went down particularly well, especially due to the festive nature of it! 

This was the platter in all it's glory! I love the little teacup at the top! That housed our praline ice cream pops covered in chocolate and popping candy! and the blueberry lollipop that was side coated in sugar.  We were instructed to hold the sugar side of the lolly on our tongue for 1 minute and then when we switched sides you felt a difference between hot and cold - it was quite cool (literally) and very yummy too! 

After that we delved into all the other sugary treats...

like this cute little chocolate cup that was filled with lime and ginger sorbet.  I didn't quite eat mine quick enough and some had melted at the bottom so I was able to sip it up from my edible cup! 

This 'Eat me' heart was a strawberries and cream mousse covered in white chocolate

and the mince pie with cinnamon cream cheese frosting was the only thing I passed on as I'm not a mince pie lover...but Mara said it was delish especially with the frosting addition of frosting.

I think our hands down favourite of the day was this tiny little bottle which was a trio of desserts! We were instructed to take it in 3 sips.  On the first sip you tasted some passionfruit jelly, on the next sip some gorgeously silky coconut panacotta and on the last sip some exotic foam! It was very inventive! 

 We rounded our afternoon off with some peppermint tea, served in these lovely iron teapots...

accompanied by our mini scones with jam and clotted cream.

It was an absolute feast, and we had so much fun trying everything out.  I would definitely recommend it out there as one of the more original Afternoon Tea's in London! 

Thanks to my super generous sister to treating me to it! 

and on this Christmas Eve here's wishing all my followers a very happy, and yummy, Christmas! May Santa be good to you this year! 

An Alice in Wonderland cupcaking party....a success!

So last weekend was one of my best friends hen-do's.  She is a cupcake lover, and her sister who was in charge of organising the hen had asked me if I would do a cupcake class for all of the guests in attendance (25 in total!!).  I had to think about it for a second, remember how badly my last cupcake party went.  However I decided that since this time around all my guests were 25 plus that it might be calmer and go more smoothly! plus I can't say no!

I took the day off work because there was alot of getting ready to do! and whipped up 50 cupcakes, half of the hens favourite Martha Stewart Brownie Recipe and half were vanilla (using the recipe from The Primrose Bakery book).  I also whipped up 8 different kinds of frosting, the three you can see above are rainbow coloured vanilla frosting, oreo cream cheese (which was a definite fave on the day) and chocolate.

I wanted there to be TONS of edible goodies on offer so that everyone had a big variety to choose from. So along with the standard jimmies, sanding sugars and sprinkles I also had marshmallows, shredded coconut, mini Oreos, Peanut Butter Cups, Reece's Pieces, M&M's, Maltesers, Cadbury's Buttons and chocolate chips to name a few! 

I also set up a little fondant area for the more adventurous cupcake creators out there.  I printed out some pictures of Alice in Wonderland style cupcakes I had found online as inspiration...

and I had a giant pack of white fondant along with all my different colour gels so everyone could get mixing, and then I pre bought the black and red because everyone knows those colours can be tricky to make for even the more experienced of us!

Then the guests started to arrive! and the excitement began!! All of us had been made these amazingly cute aprons, and our names had even been embroidered on! 

After a brief demo of how to create perfect frosting swirls, everyone was let loose to create whichever kind of cupcake they wanted to! 

Jade created these four beauties here...I was very impressed! 

and even more impressive was the amount of people getting involved with fondant! 

Rose created this fantastic Cheshire Cat cupcake that she even managed to colour co-ordinate with her outfit! 

At the end of the decorating everyone got a little box to take one cupcake home in, and then everyone chose one cupcake that they were going to get to eat at our afternoon tea.  Here is the tray with all the cupcakes people were going to eat! 

Let's get a close up on all that deliciousness! 

We headed out to the garden to commence all the yumminess! The marquee was decorated out beautifully with handmade polka dot bunting, and some were even in the shape of teapots! Here is the Hen herself (dressed up as Alice).

It was the most fun and definitely most delicious hen party I have ever been to! If you want to find out more about what else we did you can see my full round up here.