Marie Antoinette high tea at the Westin

It all started from the Sydney food bloggers' picnic where we mentioned that we should do something for the good food month. Betty initiated the outing by proposing a high tea.

"Guys let's go for high tea!"
"Why don't we do a sugar hit too while we're at it?"
"Oh wait, we have a few hours in between the high tea and the sugar hit, let's have dinner too!"

After the nth exchange of messages on Twitter and email, a group of sugar obsessed food bloggers decided to tackle a high tea at the Westin, followed by dinner for the sugar break, finished off by sugar hit at Shangrila hotel.

As a part of SIFF, the Westin has a Marie Antoinette high tea with sparkling wine for $45.

Complimentary Brown Brothers' Rose sparkling wine

Unfortunately I don't drink carbonated stuff so I had to stick to my tea, that had really nice aroma to it.

Whole rosebud JING loose tea

After quite a long wait, here comes the morsels!

“there is nothing new except what has been forgotten” - slow cooked roast beef with crème cheese stuffedbaby belle peppers, avocado and shrimp tartar, blt and deviled egg finger sandwich, kiwi and orange croissant with mascarpone

The roast beef was yum! I found the profiterole encasing the shrimp to be too dry and I ended up scooping the shrimp tartar filling out. I couldn't taste the bacon in the blt and devilled egg finger sandwich, but the little sandwich came in a cute heart shape, toasted to the crispy side, and it was pretty nice. The kiwi and orange croissant was a nice bridge between the sweets and the savoury.

‘let them eat cake!’ - lime curd meringue tart, chocolate cream with exotic fruit caramel and candied walnuts, macaron with fresh blueberries, beetroot and cherry cup cake

The chocolate cream came in a little cup and it wasn't as rich as it looked, thanks to the exotic fruit caramel that tasted like passionfruit cream, that cut the richness of the chocolate cream.

Lime curd meringue tart (L), beetroot and cherry cup cake (R)

The lime curd meringue tart had the picture of the queen made from fondant. The tart had really strong lemon flavour that wasn't very appreciated by some of us, although I was quite fond of it. The beetroot and cherry cupcake, although the beetroot flavour wasn't very apparent, was nice and moist, and surprisingly one of the best pieces on the high tea.

Macaron with fresh blueberries

Most of us left the macarons to the last, since they were just too pretty! It was very heavy in the almond flavour but I liked it, especially with the addition of the fresh blueberries that cut the richness of the macaron.

Halfway through the high tea, we were wondering where the scones were, since high tea wouldn't be right without scones! Apparently the waiter would bring them out once we've finished the savoury plate.

Plain baby scones, baby scones with raisins

Scone with cream and strawberry jam

The scones had cake-like texture and I like my scones to be denser, more like the Tea Room type of scones! But with a slather of cream and strawberry jam, everything was all good.

We got unlimited servings of tea/coffee. When my tea run out and everyone ordered their second pot of tea, I opted for a cup of hot chocolate. Yes, I hadn't had enough sweets ;)

Hot chocolate

I suspect that they used powdered chocolate for this, sadness :(

After hanging around for a bit in the lobby, we decided to go to Subsolo tapas bar for a sugar break before our sugar hit later that night. I will post about these a bit later :D