Mad Hatters Spring Picnic 2010

Sydney food bloggers gather with their best dishes and wildest hats to Centennial Park for a Mad Hatters spring picnic. An event held in tandem with the Melbourne food blogging community.

Many prizes were up for grabs, including the major prize of a KitchenAid stand mixer for best overall dish!

Find out which bloggers had the wackiest hats, the best dishes of the day and who walks away with the KitchenAid.

Before we get into this blog post, the images presented in a comic book format. Partly for stylistic reasons. Partly to differentiate from the myriad of other posts already covering this event.

Any text included in this post outside of the comic book “pages”, should be read as a supplementary, like a director’s commentary track.

Anyhow, onto the post.

By far and away, the most impressive hat was the Lady Gaga inspired hat by Tammi, which looks like a model from a science project.

Rita‘s bunny rabbit tail was a cute touch, while Phuoc‘s eclair enhancement to her hat was a sweet one.

The guy with the video camera was a little disconcerting at first. It wasn’t all that clear as to who he was or why he was recording video of the event.

A few questions were asked and the situation was cleared up. I’d be curious to see the output of his video project.

Five picnic blankets worth of some great food, far more than we could have possibly consumed.

This, as with the Sweets below, is but a small, non-specific sample of some of the dishes of the day.

As with most of these food blogger gatherings, dessert appear in disproportionate volumes.

At the very least, the ratio is around 50/50. In this case, it was around 2-3 dessert dishes for every savoury one. If you were to factor in volume, it would be even more!

One dessert that I really liked which I thought was somewhat underrated, or at least understated, was Helen‘s bacon dulce de leche caramel slice.

Bacon & sweet combo ftw! :)

With the vast scope of possible dishes that one could choose to make, it came as a surprise to me that this many dishes were nigh on identical, or at least were inspired from the same source.

This was a first for me, and I’ve been to a number of food blogger gatherings in my time.

This awesome cake speaks for itself. As soon as I saw it, there was no question who would win the Sweet prize.

Anna is certainly a talented baker.

Had I known what this was before trying it, I probably would have overlooked it for other more “enticing” food. I’m glad I didn’t.

A solid savoury dish. Not sure if there is more that needs to be said. It’s as good as it sounds.

The amount of detail that went into the “tea-ramisu” was amazing.

Edible chocolate tea cups complete with handles, tea soaked sponge, not to mention the attractive display.

Unfortunately, didn’t actually get around to trying this out but it certainly looks like it would have been real delicious.

There’s a recipe up for it, so I might have to try it out for myself at some stage.

The image of Simon seemingly having an outburst at the judges is taken out of context, as this image was taken before the prizes were announced.

I, to this day, have no idea what was going on at the time.

Anita‘s reaction is absolutely golden!

I don’t think anyone could feel disappointed for not winning this much coveted prize after seeing how over the moon she was when her name was called.

Winning “Overall Best Dish” was an impressive feat as her humble and simply presented Thai fish cakes outdid more technical and extravagant dishes.

If her reaction is anything to go by, I trust that the KitchenAid will put it to good use.

The best of the Sydney food blogging community are an open, friendly and inclusive group.

Time and time again I hear from first time attendees how their initial concerns with entering into a well established group of friends and associates dissipates once they realise how friendly and engaging everyone is.

So, for bloggers out there who are reluctant to participate and meet new people, we don’t bite. For readers, when a reader event is organised, feel free to come along. The no-bite rules applies here too :)

Serious kudos for Billy and Karen for organising this event.

To all the food bloggers that made this an awesome day, with their great food and company.

Maybe some for Ninja too for wearing such an ensemble :)

Image courtesy of Iron Chef Shellie.

As stated at the beginning of this post, this picnic was held in tandem with Melbourne food blogger, holding their own Mad Hatter’s spring picnic at the same time.

For accounts of their day, check out Iron Chef Shellie’s post, which has links to other participating bloggers on the day.

Tagged as: BBQ, Bloggers, Bread, Cakes, caramel, Centennial Park, chocolate, comic, Desserts, Festival, KitchenAid, lunch, Mad Hatters, Melbourne, nuffnang, Party, Photography, picnic, Social, Sydney