Adult Easter Party - Part 2: Sweets

I know you all skimmed through yesterday's post and were positively irritated with me for making you wait until today to see the sugary stuff.  Well, I had to find a way to get you to come back.

Let's start with the mildly sweet.  You have to have breakfast pastries at a brunch.

The first ones we served were Peanut Butter and Jelly Muffins.  I used this recipe from The Way the Cookie Crumbles which is one of my favorite blogs.

The recipe is for full size muffins, but when there are so many food options to choose from I like things to be bite size so people feel like they can take one (or two) of everything.

The second pastry is a take on the Cinnamon Honey Scones from the Bouchon Bakery cookbook I made a few weeks ago.  Since I liked them so much the first time, I thought I'd make them for my guests.  But these scones have a secret.  They're gluten free!!

I am really proud of myself for how these scones turned out.  Making gluten free baked goods that taste good is not easy; I've made a bunch of things that didn't turn out so great but these turned out really well.

In fact, they are so good that I am going to do a separate post on them and give you the full story and recipe.  Yep, I'm making you come back here again.  You're welcome.

Speaking of making you comes back, I'm doing it again for this yummy stuff.  I'm not entirely sure what to call it, the recipe I adapted it from was Bunny Bait.  I prefer Crack Snack because once I made it, I had to hide it from myself to keep from eating it all before my guests came over (and then I still snuck bites of it repeatedly).

It has Chex, pretzels, popcorn, M&M's, peanuts, marshmallows, white chocolate and sprinkles.  I know, I told you, it's crack, not whack.

This is the only dessert that was completely gone at the end of the party.  There wasn't a peanut, pretzel or sprinkle left behind so I think it deserves its own post.  Stay tuned.

Coconut reminds me of Spring for some reason so Coconut Macaroons were an easy choice for this event.  Plus, these are so easy to make.

I used this recipe from Alton Brown but left off the macadamia nuts.... and I didn't melt my chocolate over the stove.  When the chocolate coating isn't the centerpiece of the treat, I just microwave and stir it in 30 second intervals until its melted.  It's faster and there are less dishes that way.  I had enough dirty dishes already.

Iced Lavender and Lemon Shortbread Cookies.  These were so different, pretty and yummy and something I'll definitely serve again.  They would fit in perfectly at a tea party.

I found these on Pinterest on this website.  These were just so Springy I couldn't resist making them, plus I accidentally bought dried lavender a long time ago and wanted to use it.

These cookies remind me of the Aviation cocktail which contains lemon juice and creme de violette (violets - lavender, same, same).

You might think we've had enough sugar but NO!  I needed one more thing and Carrot Cake Whoopie Pies made perfect sense.  After all, it was Easter and bunnies love carrots and I love cream cheese icing.

I've actually never met anyone who did not like cream cheese icing.  I'm pretty sure if those people exist, we would not be friends.  Luckily my friends are my friends and they do like cream cheese icing so I got a lot of compliments on these.

I'm going to do a separate post on these as well because I meshed together a couple of recipes and made some modifications so I can pretend I made up the recipe.


 

Hopefully you'll have the opportunity to use some of these recipes when hosting your own brunch.  I don't think they're at all Easter-centric... maybe some of them are a bit Springy but Spring lasts a long time.  Especially if it doesn't even start until May which is what it's feeling like around here.  I also hope you'll check back here over the next few days for the posts on Meat Wrapped Meat, Gluten Free Cinnamon Honey Scones, Easter (or insert other holiday here) Crack and Carrot Cake Whoopie Pies.

Now, the question I ask myself each and every time I have a party.  Do you think we have enough food?

Julie