Taking tea with the Mad Hatter

Many many moons ago Kelly put a call out to bloggers for a magical afternoon tea that would transport us to a fairytale land. We chose a date far in advance - well we had to as it was all booked up - which happened to be just last weekend. A group of us all met up in the beautiful city of York for some retail therapy and obviously CAKE!
When the time came for us to start heading over to the Cedar Court Grand Hotel we were all extremely excited thinking about the amazing treats and cakes that would be in store for us. When we got into the room which the afternoon tea was held I was pleasantly surprised by the elegance of the setting but perplexed by the table in the middle of the room. Surely this wouldn't be a buffet?

Well, yes it was. Scones and tea were served to us at our very large table and then we were told to help ourselves to the treats they had laid out on the central table. When you don't know how much food you will get you automatically fill your plate, well that is what I did. I made sure to pick up one of everything so that I was sure to get a taste. Although the room wasn't overly packed with people it did still feel like a children's disco, all wanting to get to the food first.

We started tucking into our food and were surprised by how sweet almost all of the items were. The only savoury bits were small rolled sandwiches. It is safe to say we were all a little disappointed by this as there was just too much sugar on our plates, we needed something else savoury to balance it out. My favourite item on the plate would have to be either the strawberry jelly (as it was the least sweet thing) or the bottom of the mushroom (definitely not the topper!), which was chocolate wafer filled with chocolate mousse.
The other items were: pineapple and yogurt 'drink me' bottles (quite tasty), white chocolate lolly (very sickly with a sort of creamy texture), chocolate cake (nice but I didn't get a lot as I was too full), a cup of green and pink raspberry mouse (very tart and not nice at all) and edible white chocolate candles (nice idea but crumbled as you tried to eat).

We all had to stop after a few bits of food as it was so sweet! We struggled to eat everything on our plates meaning we missed out a few things. For me, I only had the tiniest nibble of my chocolate cake which I left till last as I wanted it the most! As we looked around we noticed everyone had taken away boxes and were filling them from the table. By the time we asked for a box everyone had cleared the stand!
If someone asked me if I'd recommend this afternoon tea, sadly, I'd have to say no. For £33 per person, I couldn't say that I enjoyed the food or the overall experience. The only thing that made this better was the company I was with. We all had a great laugh about how we were literally going to be in to sugar comas on our journey home.