CIRCULATING amid a melee of puffed sleeves and to the dulcet tones of The Police there was a dead cert on the 1980s drinks-party scene: the chequerboard canapé. Immaculately cut brown bread and cream cheese, artfully topped with alternating black and red caviar for the effect of a gameboard. “They were hysterical,” remembers Somerset-based Victoria Blashford-Snell, who began her foray into catering in the latter part of that decade as a teenager, craned over blanched mangetout, painstakingly piping in cream cheese and filling cocktail sausages with mashed potato.
Nearly 40 years on she’s the doyenne of canapés for the smartest weddings and parties in marquees dotted across the rolling hills where Dorset, Somerset and Wiltshire meet, yielding to the demand of clients (this year it’s anything that can be made into a croquette, while two years ago everyone wanted mac and cheese) and holding firm on her least favourite of the canapé old guard. “People still worship a mini Yorkshire pudding with roast beef. Men love it but I think it’s a bit flabby, so to avoid people asking for it I created a little filo tartlet with English
