My Birthday Cocktail Parties

I love to host cocktail parties on my birthday. I find it only fitting to celebrate my half birthday by sharing pictures of highlights from past parties.

For the longest time, the only cookie cutters I owned were heart shaped. This meant that I created a lot of Valentine's Day cookies for every occasion!


The only layer cake pans I owned were also Heat Shape. Keith is the king of making layer cakes.

Can you have a fancy cocktail party without chocolate covered strawberries?

I made chocolate covered peanut butter eyeballs last Halloween and they were a hit. I made simple chocolate covered for the holiday party.

Sometimes store bought cookies (in this case macaroons) make it into the mix.

Peanut butter kisses, banana bread, mocha chocolate crinkle cookies and my grandmother's famous pinwheel cookies.

After I covered all of the strawberries, I used the remaining chocolate to cover some pretzels.

I've shown you the sweet, here is some savory.

I'm going to end with something that wasn't part of the cocktail party, exactly. Keith made me a chocolate souffle for my birthday while I prepped for the party!

Wasabi Encrusted Salmon

Keith and I received a number of Harry and David gift baskets for Christmas. One of the sets included two pretzel dips: honey mustard and wasabi mustard. Honey mustard pecan encrusted salmon is one of my favorite dishes to make, but I decided to try a variation to take advantage of this wasabi mustard.

I will admit that I'm not the greatest wasabi fan, but I figured that the mustard would help mellow out the spiciness. I spread the mustard over the salmon, sprinkled on Italian seasoned bread crumbs, and then baked at 400 degrees F until it was cooked through.

Unfortunately I forgot to take a picture of the final product (I guess I was too hungry). I assure you that it was so delicious that I cannot wait to make it again!

Chocolate popcorn

I wanted to spice up some stovetop popped popcorn, so I sprinkled some peppermint Williams and Sonomoa hot chocolate mix and salt onto it. I shook the mixture in the (covered) pan to evenly spread the minty chocolate along the popped corn. This also helped it melt a bit. This was a delicious, although messy, snack.

Ingredients for the chocolate popcorn.

Epic Fruit Salad

I was going to a tropical themed dinner party, so what would be more appropriate to bring for dessert than a beautiful fruit salad? (Although it was a pain to bring to the destination on the subway!) I was VERY lucky that I ended up with just enough fruit to fill up the salad, and very little extra. I hope to have more excuses in the future to create other epic fruit salads.

Refreshing Smoothie

There is nothing more refreshing than a freshly made fruit smoothie. Some people add yogurt or milk to their smoothies, I keep mine as 100% fruit. I don't even add any ice, I use frozen fruit to keep it cold. (I usually make smoothies in large batches and save some in the fridge. Adding ice just makes it way too watery for my taste.)

This smoothie has guava pulp, mango, strawberries, blueberries, orange juice, pineapple juice, and carrots. (Yes, that's right. I add veggies to my smoothies.) YUM!

Cranberry Muffins

Last fall, I received some cranberries with my organic vegetable delivery. I didn't know what I wanted to make, so I placed them in the freezer until I had an idea.

I decided that I wanted to try to make muffins with items that I had in my fridge. I searched for recipes, and then ended up taking components from each to combine them into the recipe that I'm sharing with you today. The recipe makes ~20 medium sized muffins.

I'd never seen the inside of a fresh cranberry before. Wow they are sour! And I double checked, cranberry seeds are edible, and there are no pits in them, either!

Ingredients

• 1/4 cup butter (salted)
  
• 1/4 cup apple sauce
  
• 1/2 cup Splenda Sugar Blend for Baking
  
• 1/2 cup brown sugar
  
• 2 eggs
• 1 teaspoon vanilla extract
• 1 cup non-fat yogurt
• 1/2 cup orange juice
  
• 2 cups all-purpose flour
• 1 teaspoon baking powder
• 1/2 teaspoon baking soda
• 1/2 teaspoon ground allspice
• 1 cup chopped fresh or frozen cranberries (8 oz bag) ~2 cups whole. some finely chopped, others just cut in half
  
  
  

Instructions

• Cream butter, sugar, and apple sauce, eggs and vanilla. Stir in yogurt
  
• Combine flour, baking powder, baking soda and spices and slowly stir into the wet mixture.
  
• Stir in cranberries
  
• grease muffin pan and pour batter in until the cups are half full.
  
• Bake at 350 degrees C for 20-25 min until muffins are done.
  

These muffins are SUPER moist, but this shouldn't be a surprise because of all of the wet ingredients that went into them (I think I should have left out the OJ). Maybe next time I should add some more flour... I will be back to tweak this recipe some more in the future.

Cookie Press Shapes

Earlier today I shared with you my first experience with a cookie press. In this post, I am going to share the shapes of the disks from the Crate and Barrel Cookie Press. Other cookie presses contain similar shapes, so this could be a handy reference for other presses.

Some of my friends thought these looked like trilobites.


This is the one shape I cannot really figure out. The shape is too small to make a nice shape, the tiny stars are cute, but too much dough comes out in one click to make them.


Christmas Tree Cookie Press Shape


This shape would look really cool decorated with frosting.


When baked, my friends think that turned to the side, the pumpkin shape could also resemble Santa.


I didn't expect this shape to create a heart, but I love what came out of it!


Is this supposed to be a 4 leaf clover?


I'm not a huge fan of the candy cane shape, I think that too much dough comes out in a click to create a good shape. I would just roll candy canes by hand.


The best shape for filling with jam.


This flower shape is super pretty. If you added a face it could look like a lion


I love this shape, although the size of it does seem to vary a bit each time. I need more practice before I get a good consistent shape.


Another flower shape


I don't know what this shape is supposed to portray, but the design is super cool


Another flower shape. In baking it will fuse together.