Mad Hatter Dinner Party!

Wow, it's been a bit of a crazy week!

First of all, I couldn't post anything new on my blog for a few days because my laptop completely gave up the ghost on me. RIP laptop!

But the real reason it's been crazy is that on Wednesday evening, I threw a Mad Hatter's Dinner Party. Yepp. Why? Well, I'm doing an online course on Creative Problem Solving and the 'homework' for this week was to eat something different. I'm a coeliac and a vegetarian, which somewhat limits my options, so I decided to twist the theme a little and invite over some friends and family to partake of a slightly mad dining experience.

Oh, the fun we had! First off, I set out the table thusly:

And then I just let my imagination run a bit wild. So...this is what I did for food:

To start, we had carrot and ginger soup, which I had dyed a niiiiice bright green! Because what says 'fun' with food more than luminous green soup!? To make it more entertaining for my guests, I served it from a teapot and into mugs, so they expected tea and got bright green soup. What do you mean, that doesn't sound like a nice surprise?!!?

They also had heart and diamond shaped bread and butter to eat it with.

Next up:

Teeny sandwiches (using Genius bread, of course) served on cocktail sticks! We had cheese and cucumber, cheese and ham and chicken and blood. Just kidding, it was salsa. But it looked like blood! Trying to eat the sandwiches was particularly entertaining...

Next up, breadstick and chocolate 'hedgehogs', courtesy of DS Breadsticks and Nutella spread, decanted into some martini glasses. This one was VERY popular!!

I made chocolate 'mud' cupcakes - dark chocolate sponge, with chocolate eggs hidden at the bottom, a homemade chocolate ganache core, and orange-flavoured (but multi-coloured) buttercream on top.

And green 'boulder' cookies - green cookies (not that you can really see the green in the pic) with chocolate and fudge chunks...

Not to mention individual dishes of marshmallows for melting on kebab skewers over the tealights by each place setting, which could be turned into s'mores with chocolate ganache and the cookies...

Our dining room smelled like burnt marshmallow for a full day afterwards!

And all these treats were washed down with a shot of pistachio cocktail (equal parts Baileys, amaretto liquer and blue curacao - trust me, it's SO good) and, of course, pink tea.

It was a lot of work but I think everyone enjoyed themselves and it was certainly a lot of fun to work on and produce. A LOT of colours were tested for the soup and the tea to find one that wouldn't look like swamp water when mixed. Trust me on this, a lot of colours do!

The best thing about it, other than the great company, is that this would translate so easily for a children's party. I don't have kids of my own but maybe when my niece and nephews are a little older, this could be great fun.

Have you done something really fun for a party? If so, please tell me all about it!