Karma is a funny thing. I firmly believe in karma, good deeds garner good and bad deeds garner bad and I for one am constantly shocked when I meet nasty people and I often worry about their karma. Thankfully those people are few and far between and I make sure I  concentrate on the many lovely people I meet. When I first met my dining companion Trissa, it was at the Adriano Zumbo Charity cake auction. She had just paid over $100 for one slice of cake and I was standing by the doorway when she came in and asked for a box to put it in. I said congratulations to her and she smiled and said thanks and then asked if I would like to try some.

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For Northern Hemisphere readers, the concept of Christmas in July or “Yulefest” must be an odd one at best. Why would you have Christmas in the middle of the year and why in July? One reason why we Antipodeans celebrate it is because of the weather. As a child I used to watch television shows where Santa would visit children who lived in houses covered with snow and Christmas was a time to feast on warm roasted turkey, potatoes and other delicious warming goodies. Santa never delivered presents to kids wearing shorts and thongs (flip flops, not G strings!) and as such I always yearned for a White Christmas. During December the weather here is so warm that having a Roast Turkey and potatoes during the 40 Celsius (104 degrees Fahrenheit) degree temperatures seems for the hardcore traditionalists and salads and cold seafood feature mostly on the Australian Christmas dinner table. However July is the coldest month here and as such we can simulate some sort of cold Christmas.

So when Lisa organised a High Tea at the Loft and the theme was Christmas in July I eagerly agreed  straight away. I’ve spoken often of my absolute love for Christmas (almost as much as Halloween) so I take any chance to celebrate it. It’s not really freezing cold and it seems nowadays Sydney is often bathed in the warm embrace of sunshine but I’ll also take any excuse for a High Tea. My fellow High Tea-ers were Betty, Helen, Karen, Lisa, Steph and Suze.

For $45, the High Tea with a twist features a teapot cocktail, a selection of sweets and savouries and a pot of tea. We take our time choosing everything as they look pretty tempting. All teapot cocktails are serves for two so we try one of each of the three Christmas in July cocktails: Santa’s Little Helper, Rudolph’s Nose and Silent Night. They arrive in adorable teapots and we ask Betty who is suitably attired for a Christmas in July in a green and red jacket to pour them for us.

The Santa’s Little Helper teapot cocktail has fresh berries crushed with cranberry juice, bourbon and fruit liqueurs balanced with a hint of citrus topped off with a red fruit tea. The bourbon is a bit too strong and medicinal as it’s virtually identical in appearance to the pinky red hued Rudolph’s Nose once poured, we do a lot of sniffing and guessing to try and avoid it.

The Rudolph’s Nose teapot cocktail is delicious and the definite crowd favourite with homemade rhubarb purée and fresh cherry shaken with bison grass vodka and a hint of citrus finished with Turkish apple tea. It’s sweet, with a light dash of alcohol and vodka is always a great choice to avoid clashing with other flavours.

The dark brown shaded Silent Night cocktail was the one that people were dreading the most with a chocolate liqueur combined with Martel VS and a touch of espresso, rounded off with peppermint tea. The flavour is more espresso with a touch of liqueur more that anything else and not really a chocolate peppermint crisp flavour that I was envisaging. Still it’s more palatable than the Santa’s Little Helper.

Sencha Quince Fizz – Lillet shaken with a hint of vanilla, fresh passion fruit pulp, pink grapefruit and chilled T2’s “Sencha Quince” tea

The last teapot cocktail is the Sencha Quince Fizz which is Lillet shaken with a hint of vanilla, fresh passion fruit pulp, pink grapefruit and chilled T2’s “Sencha Quince” tea. It’s sweet and favoured by many however the passionfruit flavour overwhelms most of the other flavours within the teapot cocktail.

When food bloggers attack! Nicely of course…we’re ladies!

The food tiers arrive but of course we must go through the customary ritual and the cameras capture the tiers from every angle. The sandwiches are quite tasty with fresh fillings although the bread is a touch dry on the outside perhaps from sitting uncovered. There is turkey and cranberry, baby prawn and mayonnaise with sprouts, honey roasted leg ham with mustard pickle.

Sandwiches, frittata, chicken and pistachio galantine and baby red peppers stuffed with goat’s cheese

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Food blogger get togethers are fun. But a variation of this is a girl’s only food blogger get together made up of a smaller group of us where we can unashamedly gossip about weddings, shoes and other girly things. So where better to do this at a Champagne High Tea and luckily the We Love Sydney card gives us 2 Champagne High Teas for the price of 1 (2 people for $45). I’m Champagne High tea-ing today with my fellow High Tea lovers Karen, Suze and Reem. Planning this, through a suggestion from Karen was no meat feat entailing over 70 facebook messages. A military style operation if ever I heard of one!

Selection of sandwiches clockwise from bottom left: Smoked Salmon; Cucumber on malted bread; York Ham with mustard mayonnaise and cheddar and vine tomato

We’re given our flutes of champagne soon after we are seated and a plate of sandwiches. We’re sitting at a table right near the window overlooking a small garden. The sandwich selection is: ham & mustard; smoked salmon; cucumber and tomato & cheddar cheese. The smoked salmon is, I feel compelled to add, quite unevenly filled, some sandwiches chock full of smoked salmon while other only have a thin slice. However despite this they are thoroughly delicious (I had one of the thinner sandwiches).

The ham doesn’t find favour with some although I like this. The cucumber isn’t great with the seeds making the bread a bit wet and bizarrely cottage cheese pieces are spread instead of the traditional cream cheese. I find the bread too thick for the tomato and cheddar sandwiches. It should probably be added that the buttering on these sandwiches might be considered verging on the heavy handed (you can see how much butter is used in the smoked salmon sandwiches above with the yellow edging against the coral salmon being butter).

Ronnefeldt’s Earl Grey loose leaf tea

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