Madhatter's Tea Party for Ten

A VERY IMPORTANT DATE: Flo’s 23^rd
DON’T BE A RABBIT: 12.30 - late pm
ADDRESS: now that would be telling
DRESS CODE: mad hat… no hat, no cake

Having just returned from three months cavorting around Asia, I decided to celebrate my birthday with an intimate tea party where I could catch up with my closest friends. To reflect an appropriate degree of myself in the party (it is, after all, my birthday) I decided on an Alice in Wonderland theme.  This comes from both my life long love of Lewis Carroll, and my reputation as a bit of a mad hatter (one of my nicknames, worryingly, is Kook).

When something colourful and nicely printed pops through the letter box adressed to me, I feel honoured that someone bothered to find out my address, buy a stamp and post it. After drawing and Photoshop-colouring my invite, I had moo print it on thick glossy postcards, saving on the delivery charge by ordering it to their London office (they don’t actually advertise that as a possibility so here’s the heads up! P.S. the quality tops Vistaprint by a mile.)

Now, a tea party wouldn’t be complete without tea, finger sandwiches, scones and cake. Here is my menu… recipes to follow in my next post, not of how to make a sandwich, but of money-saving homemade ham, roast chicken, mayonnaise and so on... 

cucumber and mint butter
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chicken and basil mayonnaise with lettuce

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roast ham, mustard and cress

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humpty dumpty mayo and chives

Scones with clotted cream and raspberry jam

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Red Velvet Cupcakes

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Rose Cupcakes

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Rose Meringues  

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Marbled Jelly Rabbits

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Olivia's Playing Card Shortbread
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Cava, Earl Grey, Lapsang Souchong, and Darjeeling, After tea cocktails  

B/W photos by my very talented friend Theo Brainin

Decorations get you in the mood and I think its as much fun making them as it is enjoying them. I hung up an array of eccentric hats on one wall, which I forgot to photograph…oops… and had a string across the staircase for my birthday cards, including this, very fitting card from my friend Olivia.

Other than that we strung a load of playing cards together and tied them around the lamp and had the string come down to the table into a tin labelled ‘STRING’ – so Lewis Carroll.

Additional touches were a porcelain rabbit shaped vase and serving dish, the rabbit jelly mould, a soundtrack inc. Jefferson Airplane's 'White Rabbit'…White plastic roses, real roses courtesy of my friend Pippa, and balloons of course…

Lots of teacups, teapots, tea… vintage cake stands including a teacup cake stand from my friend Theo, perfect for scones since you can put the jam in the tea cup. You can get similar things here, but I say make your own with charity shop teacups and dishes held together with pretty little shot glasses and the power of the almighty superglue.

I also made some ironic flamingo straws (see photo above) since it wasn’t sunny enough to play flamingo croquet. I used this 19^th century Audubon print, fuchsia straws, and a roll of sellotape. 

After all that cake a few of us decided to brave the woods, hats and all, for our own adventure.

B/W photos by  Theo Brainin 

Finally, we had light dinner, got suitably tipsy and played the hat game. The hat game doesn’t actually have anything to do with the mad hatter but it is pretty mad and you do need a hat… it is a mix of Taboo and charades and vastly improved with a little tipple... 


p.s. for more of Theo's photographic genius, see here 

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