Mad Hatter Tea Party

Last March 17 was another bloggers get-together for no particular reason. Just the draw of food and company. If we must have an occasion, let’s say it was to duly celebrate St. Patty’s Day. But…the theme of the party, as thought of by the hostess, was Mad-Hatter. Although we didn’t come dressed in fancy hats, and wearing layers of white makeup on our faces, let’s just say the ‘madness’ went to the dishes that were contributed. When I say ‘mad’ it’s not ‘crazy’ but mad skills to the effort put in to making these dishes. Oh and our conversations went a little mad along the way too. All topics under the sun were spewed out over honeydew tea. 😛 Check out the menu (below);

Now, I have attended tea parties before and hi-tea parties but seriously, nothing beats the spread of this gathering. And best of all, everything is homemade with sizeable portions. I really felt privileged to taste these creations and I’m going to breakdown the goodies to you according to each blogger.

Swee San of The Sweet Spot

Our hostess and organiser. This lady really outdid herself. First-up was this awesome sandwich cake (below). Yes, it really is a cake, I kid you not…but cut it inside, it will reveal all the makings of a great sandwich.

Smorgastarta Sandwich Cake

As Swee San cut into the cake, we all crossed our fingers in anticipation of how great it would look on the inside….it did not disappoint. 🙂

Cross-section in detail…

Working the camera in different angles….

Our hostess with the mostess….

This second cake was even more amazing. It is a rainbow cake (below), literally because it has seven layers of natural colour. 7 LAYERS people. Call me a bit of a ‘sua-gu‘ (country bumpkin) but I have never been more delighted visually than when this cake revealed itself cross-section.

Rainbow cake

We all held our breaths and bladders when Swee San attempted to make a clean slice out of this cake because it was rather high. But as always, it was picture perfect. Check out the flavours that encompass these amazing layers (below).

Eating them was a bit of a conversation piece too, because we were wondering whether we should shove all the 7 flavours into our gobs or go one-by-one or 3:4 ratio. Overthinking right? The first 3 flavours tasted really good together as well as the last 3 flavours, but we’re all kinda in agreement that if we taste anything with the pandan (screwpine), the pandan would overpower all the other flavours. I don’t really see that as a bad thing. The cake looks high, but it was moist and light. You don’t feel too satiated with this cake.

Oh my, these cookies (below)….these are THE cookies that I could be tempted to sell a kidney for. I saw this post on The Sweet Spot some weeks ago and wild thoughts were going through my mind as to how they taste like. It’s made with four different types of chocolate and a sprinkling of sea salt on top to just tie everything together. These cookies were literally the size of my palm. It may take a while to get through each piece but you won’t want to put it down. I even brought several pieces home for hubster and my boy and my son managed to gobble up a piece all on his own.

NY Times Chocolate Chip Cookies

The last creation from our hostess was this really delicious butter pecan ice cream. Homemade. Homemade ice creams are always different, in taste and texture and this was yummy-good!

 Butter pecan ice cream with poached pear 

Wendy of Table for Two or More and Myself! 🙂

These are poached pears with syrup, cinnamon and vanilla (above). There’s probably more ingredients to it but I’m stating what I can see from the dish. It went really well with Swee San’s pecan ice cream and a great end to the eating session.

These lovely pumpkin rose buns or ‘mantou‘ (below) were supposed to be present too but due to some really unfortunate circumstances, they had to miss out on their chance of glory. But luckily here is a photo from Wendy’s pic stock, and they do deserve a worthy mention seeing how much work was put in to make it;

I coupled our dishes together mainly because it was on the same plate. The soft egg tarts were from Wendy, you can check out her recipe here. I made biscuits and gravy, though to be more accurate, it’s cheddar, chive scones with sausage gravy. I wasn’t too thrilled at how my scones turned out because it didn’t rise as high as I wanted it to.

Egg tarts and Biscuits

Sausage gravy

Reese of ReeseKitchen

Reese’s creations were so impressive. These banoffee tarts or banana-toffee tarts were light and not too sweet. Best to eat with hands.

Like I said, these ladies all have mad skills when it comes to baking. Take a look at these chocolate and strawberry swiss rolls. Mind you, those little bears and strawberries are not painted on (except for the stems and faces). These characters have to piped properly onto the tray before pouring the roll batter over them. My son loved the bears and ate his share I brought right down to licking his fingers.

Had loads of fun catching up and I’m pretty sure we all skipped dinner that day. We had so much fun we forgot to take a group photo. I was tempted to super-impose our faces onto a make-shift photo but lazy bones took over.