SPD ‘13: Dessert and decorations

I didn’t do a very good job of taking pictures of how we decorated the house or how the ultimate food and drink set-up went.  In the few minutes before the party started, my priorities weren’t focused on future blog posts but on getting the grub put out and labeled.

Luckily, I set up the dessert buffet earlier so I was able to snap a few photos before I turned into one of those proverbial chickens minus their noggins.

So from left to right, we have: Lemon Gooey Cake Bars, chocolate cupcakes with three different frostings, the NY Times Cookies with butterscotch and white chocolate chips, mint Oreo-truffle brownies, and Puppy Chow.  The one thing missing was the peanut butter fudge, which was very soft so it was in the freezer until just before our guests were due to arrive.

The three frostings were, from top to bottom, mint, vanilla, and chocolate Irish cream.

If you like chocolate chip cookies, you HAVE to try the NY Times Chocolate Chip Cookies.  I made the original ones at Christmas and everyone loved them.  I figured we had enough chocolate for the party so that’s why I went with butterscotch and white chocolate chips in this batch.  I have a kitchen scale so when I made them the first time, I weighed my dough and baked the 3.5-oz dough balls that the recipe suggests.  Those were some BIG cookies.  For the party, I used my 1/4-cup scoop so my cookies were uniform but still significant in size.

Don’t skip the sprinkling of sea salt on the dough.  It takes the cookies from pretty darn good to downright FABULOUS.

Next up are the brownies.  I made these truffle brownies with regular Oreos for Olivia’s birthday and went with the mint Oreos for the party.

And last but not least, everyone always loves Puppy Chow, especially me the day after the party.  It’s in that bowl on the far right.

The drink station was set up in the window.  We had punch, soda, water, liquor, beer-vodka lemonade and wine inside while the beer and cider were out on the deck in coolers.

Other than taping up some shamrocks, my main decoration was the backdrop for the food table.  I saw some streamers sewed together so that they were ruffly and I asked my mom if she could help me out.  She came through with flying colors, then it was up to me to figure out how to hang the streamers.

I ended up cutting a length of painter’s tape the length I needed and laying it out on the kitchen floor.  Then I cut the streamers so they were 5 feet long and spread them along the tape in a layout that worked.

As you can see, it was a very precise process.

And how did it look on the wall?  Awesome!

And later with food on the table.

We also had some green lights strung on the railings on the deck.  Allow me to show you.

People pics next!