Ice cream at Fortnum & Mason with Alexandra Brown

I love Alexandra Brown's fabulous Carrington's novels (read one of my reviews here) and I've been stalking following her on Twitter for a while now and she's such a lovely lady too. So when I saw the above competition on Twitter a few months ago, OF COURSE I had to enter! I didn't think I would have much of a chance winning, but cheekily pointing to the ah... naked statue behind me on the photo (clue: it was a male statue) made my ice cream selfie stand out and I was one of the two lucky winners!

After weeks of excitement, on Saturday the time was finally there: my friend and I (and two more competition winners with their +1s) were going to be meeting Alex at the fancy Fortnum & Mason on Piccadilly for an afternoon of ice creams at the parlour! It wasn't Carrington's (sadly it's fictional) but it was close enough. I love Fortnums anyway and the parlour was decked out in the iconic soft turquoise colour of the brand and had some fabulous drawings on the walls. I had my camera on me and usually take a ton of photos, but this time around I was too busy chatting to take many snaps. So you just have to take my word on how gorgeous it looked ;)


The above coffee was my friend's, how cute is the little ice cream cone on the side?
It was so fantastic to finally meet Alex (and the adorable QT) and the lovely Katie and Kate from HarperCollins! I was worried that I would either ramble or be very quiet but it was so easy to talk to them and I soon 'interrogated' Alex about her new book (The Great Christmas Knit Off, which sounds like the ultimate cosy read and right up my alley as I love festive novels), if there are any more Carrington's novels in the cards (possibly!) and her writing in general. Also, Revenge - because I recently became obsessed with this addictive television series and I cannot stop talking about it or the fabulous Nolan Ross (apologies to my friend who I see several times a week and I keep gushing to about the show, I'm pretty sure she's sick of it by now).


My lunch and er dinner in one...
Anyway, while we were scrutinising the menus, my eyes instantly fell on one particular sundae, but as it came with gold leaf and caviar it was super expensive (also, caviar and ice cream? *shudders*). However, I asked for a scaled down version and they happily obliged! Lo and behold the still enormous "Ultimate White Chocolate Gold", consistent of several scoops of salted caramel ice cream, white chocolate ice cream and decorated with edible rose petals, whipped cream, chocolate sauce, honey comb, white chocolate twirls and sugared almonds. It was so good, but so big. And despite my best efforts I had to admit defeat as I wasn't able to finish it.


Photo credit: Alexandra Brown
At the end of our ice cream fest, we were all given a copy of Alex' latest novel, Ice Creams at Carrington's, as well which was super exciting. I've been wanting to read it for ages, but I receive so many review novels in the post with deadlines attached to them that I don't really have time to read anything else, but now I have a copy it's going right to the top of my to-read pile. Alex also signed it as well as my copy of Christmas at Carrington's, which I brought along, with some lovely messages, making the books even more special.

Many thanks to Alexandra Brown and Katie & Kate from HarperCollins for a fantastic Saturday afternoon filled with scrumptious sundaes and bookish chat, I had an absolutely wonderful time!