For my birthday last week my lovely fiancé took me to the Mad Hatter’s Afternoon Tea at the Sanderson Hotel in London. Baby N got to come too! I love afternoon tea and I love Alice in Wonderland so I was in heaven! With menus hidden inside vintage books, sugar cubes inside a music box and riddles on the napkins, I knew it was going to be a wonderful experience.
We ordered our champagne and were asked to choose our teas from a selection that had been especially created for the afternoon tea: Mint & Chocolate, Strawberry & Cream and Rhubarb & Custard. We chose Strawberry & Cream first, then had Rhubarb & Custard. They were both amazing, they tasted just liked sweeties!
Then we worked our way through the food, starting with the sweet items at the top and working our way down to the savoury items. The Carrot Meringues were yummy and I loved the pea shoots they were served on. I kept nibbling on them throughout the afternoon, they made a great palate cleanser! The ‘Strawberry & Cream’ marshmallow mushrooms were a little bland, but that might have been because the carrot meringues were so sweet!
The Match Green Tea and White Chocolate Mousse was delicious and I loved the ‘Tick Tock’ Victoria sponge. The Melting mango cheesecake wasn’t really a cheesecake – it was more like just soft cheese and mango coulis inside a white chocolate teardrop. It was really rich, I couldn’t finish it! The ‘Drink Me’ Potion was the last of the sweet items, a dinky little bottle containing a passion fruit and coconut concoction. Yummy!
On to the savoury items, the Daily Quiche was zucchini and eggplant – or courgette and aubergine to you and me! – it was so scrummy, it was a shame that there was only one each! The sandwiches were all amazing, I loved that they were rolled instead of the traditional little finger sandwiches. The egg mayonnaise one was my favourite because of the incredibly tasty lemon bread!
There were two types of scone, a sweet and a savoury. The sweet one had sultanas and the savoury one had olives. They were served with a fruit preserve, a herb butter and clotted cream. For some reason, Ian decided to put the herb butter on his sweet scone and the preserve on his savoury scone. A little weird to me, but he liked them!
To finish off the afternoon tea there was Jelly Wonderland, a self-serve trolley with amazing looking jellies set in traditional moulds. We were so stuffed from all the cakes and sandwiches that we didn’t actually have any jelly! But I did manage to fit in a Scarlet Martini – vodka with strawberries, cucumber, honey and pomegranate – while Ian had a gin & tonic.
It was such a great afternoon and one of the best afternoon teas I’ve been to. I highly recommend it!
