I used to love afternoon tea when I worked at The Nook on the
Square. The owner had learnt how to execute it just right from her training at one of the top
London Hotels. From the dainty, flowery, china crockery, to the finger
sandwiches that had to be precisely cut each time, the warm scones with clotted
cream and jam and finally the attentive waitress service.
Whilst working there I discovered a couple of London hotels
that offered alternative afternoon teas such as ‘The Gentleman’s’, ‘Charlie and
the Chocolate Factory’ and ‘Alice In Wonderland’. The latter, especially,
excited me. It was a chance to be creative and serve something just that little
bit different to what everyone else is doing. It became an obsession of a dream
for 2 years until I went to work at Evergreen and, as New Year dawned, I made a date for Alice In Wonderland Afternoon
Tea – March 26th, Mother’s Day!
So how do you plan an Alice In Wonderland Afternoon Tea?
First head to pinterest, where else?? Start a board and look
for ideas. Search everywhere and pin your ideas. If it’s any help here’s the LINK to mine .
Next thing I did was to order the dvd from Amazon, (the Disney version not the modern one with Johnny Depp).
I hadn't watched
the film in years so it was lovely to familiarise myself with the characters
and make lots of notes for ideas. Next job, plan the menu!
I'm not great on the computer but I
was really pleased with the way the menu came out. I designed it in the form of
a scroll as that was what the white rabbit carried. I changed the wording a few
times after seeing different things online.
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| Alice In Wonderland Afternoon Tea menu for Evergreen Art Café on Mothers Day, March 26th, 2017 |
My next project were the ‘eat me’ and ‘drink me’ labels.
I bought coloured card from my local Hobbycraft and cut out ‘tag’
shapes. On word I chose different clip arts and printed them off, cut them out
and stuck on to my labels.
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| 'Eat Me' and 'Drink Me' labels for Alice In Wonderland Afternoon Tea |
I ordered these very pretty napkins from Amazon. They were from a company called Talking Tables, I can highly recommend their service.
As well as these cardboard cut-out teapots for table
decoration. I was originally going to order one per person but ended up just having one or two per table.
After ordering those I discovered a tutorial on how to fold
napkins into rabbits! I just had to do some of those for decoration as well!
You can find the tutorial through this LINK . The first one was a bit fiddly but once I mastered it they didn't take long to make at all.
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| Bunny Napkins for Alice In Wonderland Afternoon Tea |
So as the day finally
arrived we had 75 people booked for the special event over 4 time periods. I worked
hard the night before prepping food and very early in the morning.
The sandwiches were fiddly to make but VERY effective! For the
playing cards I made 3 finger sandwiches out of each sandwich. With a cutter I cut
a small heart out of the centre of each finger then swapped brown hearts into
white bread and vice versa, (if that makes sense!)
For the caterpillar I cut 4 circles out of a slice of bread
and sandwiched together 2 white and 2 brown with circles of cucumber and cream
cheese.
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| Playing card and caterpillar sandwiches for Alice In Wonderland Afternoon Tea. |
For the jam tarts I used a mini muffin tin and a flower shaped
cutter. I blind baked the pastry flowers first then just warmed some jam and
poured in the case and left to set. I got the idea from THIS BLOG .
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| Mini muffin tins used for making mini jam tarts for Alice In Wonderland Afternoon Tea. |
The chocolate cupcakes were just a basic chocolate sponge
recipe and I cut out an orange, fondant daisy for the top of each for a bright
colour.
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| Chocolate cupcakes with orange, fondant flowers for Alice In Wonderland Afternoon Tea. |
It took about 4 hours, on a low heat, in the oven for these
bright red meringues to cook. When they were ready I used a basic water icing
to stick each one to the top of a marshmallow and then small icing dots all
over for effect.
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| Mushroom meringues for Alice In Wonderland Afternoon Tea |
With all the food prepared it was time to turn our attention
to laying the tables and putting out our decorations.
We got some paintings from our publishers for the walls.
And a signpost to lead the way!
Finally we displayed all the food on 3 tiered cake stands
ready for our customers.
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| Alice In Wonderland Afternoon Tea |
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| All lined up and ready to go - Alice In Wonderland Afternoon Tea |
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| Alice In Wonderland Afternoon Tea |
I had waited 2 years for this day. Between 12pm and 4.30pm we
served 75 people. Hard, hard work putting it all together but oh what a
success! Great feedback from all customers and a great sense of achievement
that it went so well.
Thank you for stopping by to read this post. Please feel free to leave a comment, especially if any part helped you to plan your own party!
I'm joining in with the link party at Cooking & Crafting with J & J and looking forward to seeing what other bloggers have been up to this week.
I'm joining in with the link party at Cooking & Crafting with J & J and looking forward to seeing what other bloggers have been up to this week.
