So...it's been
ages now but I still had to tell you about the dessert dinner party I had for my birthday! That's right, dessert and only dessert - in fact, five courses! It had been a dream of mine for a long time to have a meal like this - to have permission to eat dessert (several times over!) without first having to eat the necessary savouries. So when James had the brilliant idea of hosting a dessert dinner party for my 30th, it was like a dream come true!
Since we realised five courses of dessert wasn't
everyone's dream, we tried to choose desserts that weren't too heavy and we kept the portions small so that nobody would be feeling too hideously ill by the end of the night! We designed it like a degustation menu, leading from "appetisers" to "dessert", and complete with palate cleanser! Here's what we ate:
- pop selection: an assortment of chocolate-dipped strawberry sticks, mini fairy floss sticks and crunchy almond toffee sticks
- ouefs a la neige : two snowy white "eggs" of light meringue floating in a sea of custard
- birthday cake: layers of sponge, custard and chocolate ganache
- blood orange sorbet: a delicious, refreshing sorbet to cleanse the palate
- crepes: vanilla-poached pears wrapped in crepes and drizzled with chocolate sauce
We (James, Eko and I) made everything except the birthday cake, which we bought from
this place, and I have to say it was all delicious!
We were blessed with a really warm night, which was lucky since the only place we could seat 20 people was in our backyard! Inspired by
this beautiful card, we stuck to a circle theme in pastel colours of pink, blue, yellow and grey with the decorations. We hung up strings of bare bulbs between the trees, along with some white circle garlands I'd made, and we covered the tables with pastel-coloured confetti. We had to use a mish-mash of crockery and cutlery but somehow it actually all worked and fit in with the colour theme. I also made a whole series of folded paper pinwheels, tied together with different pastel-coloured ribbons, which we attached to the back of the chairs. I had a lot of fun finding little elements that worked with the pastel circle theme, like straws and candles from
here and twine from
here. I also used some of
this fantastic mt wrap.
And my favourite part? I always loved getting a lolly bag at the end of a party as a kid, so I made little take-home hot chocolate packs for each guest, inspired by the ones at
this great party. There was a little bag of hot chocolate mix, a marshmallow and a chocolate-dipped wooden spoon (remember I mentioned them
here?).
All in all, it was such a fun night! I couldn't have done any of it without a huge amount of help from three amazing people, though. James - among other things - made the delicious sorbet and crepe dishes, Eko came up with so many ideas for the decorations and did so much cooking and setting up on the day, and my mum cleaned up the whole garden and was out there in 35 odd degrees mowing the lawn like a mad woman, so thank you, everyone, for making my dessert dream come true!
Oh, and the balloons! Eko knew how much I loved
this idea so when I arrived home from work on my birthday my room was filled with beautiful white helium balloons! Such a dream...
