My neighbor, Paula, made these incredible S’mores Bars based on my Labor Day food post. How insane do these look??
They were delicious and very very rich, no way you could eat an entire bar yourself.
Paula’s plan is to serve them with ice cream to lighten up the richness. She said they were fun to make, easy, and would be a great recipe to try with kids. Thank you, Paula, for the treat today and for the gorgeous photo!
(GIVEAWAY: Win a $50 gift certificate for printables from Bird’s Party.)
This recipe comes via Sheryl B’s blog, Lady Behind the Curtain. I saw these mini pecan pie pops on Sheryl’s Father’s Day Dessert Table and had to ask her if I could post the recipe. How amazing would these be for your July 4th barbecue!
That’s right pie ON A STICK! 
It seems that everything is going on a stick. So why not a pie? It may look intimidating but it is a lot easier then you think and your guests are going to go GAGA (not the Lady kind) over them.
PECAN PIE POP RECIPE
Pastry Dough Ingredients
Pastry Dough Directions
Beat butter and cream cheese until fluffy mix in flour if needed add enough water to make the pastry cling together. Chill for 1 hour.
Filling Ingredients
Filling Directions
Mix together egg, egg yolk, corn syrup, brown sugar, butter and vanilla.
To make tarts: Tear off a piece of dough and press into small tart pan. Spoon filling into tart pan and sprinkle with chopped nuts. Bake at 350 degrees for 20 – 25 minutes or until set. Once tarts are cooled take a tooth pick and run it around the edge to loosen.
Cut a slit in the side of the tart and slide in the 8-in. Lollipop stick until you feel the other side. DO NOT go thru. NOTE: if you don’t have tart pans then use a muffin tin and only go up the sides 1-in.
Makes approximately 8 tarts.
Thank you, Sheryl, for this great recipe. To learn more about Sheryl and discover more of her entertaining tips, please visit her blog, Lady Behind the Curtain.
And seriously, how cool would these pecan pie pops look on your next dessert table.
Hope your Memorial Day is sweet!
Hamburger cupcakes
Candy kabobs
Fruit skewers
Red, white, and blue cake
How will you be celebrating? Please add your parties to our main site.
(Decorating a dessert table? Enter our $25 giveaway from Superior Nut Store. It’s so easy!)
Anyone who knows me, knows I have a serious sweet tooth, so here’s my roundup of my favorite Valentine’s Day treats. (Click on the photos to see what parties they’re from.)
Yummy, right?
(Enter our $50 CSN giveaway: Leave a comment here telling us what you want for Christmas. That’s it!)
I love posting photos of the gorgeous cakes we get on our site. I’m continually blown away by the talent. Take a look and tell me which one is your favorite. I can’t decide.
Brittany S’s Casino 40th Birthday
Charynn O’s Madelyn’s 4th Birthday Party
Nicole W’s A Magical Cornish Fairy Affair
Katie P’s Lucas Turns 1 (The Very Hungry Caterpillar) Birthday
Rose A’s A Rainbow Party (Romeo’s 1st Birthday)
Nala C’s Polka Dots and Triceratops – 3rd Birthday Party
Candace M’s Janelle’s Pixie Hollow Birthday
Laura B’s Ladies & Gentleman: An Evening Affair Birthday
Brittany S’s Super Mario Party
Frog Prince Paperie’s Modern Dinosaur Birthday Adventure
Veronica B’s Alice’s Garden Party
Corrie S’s Sophie’s Everything Purple Baby Shower
Tonya S’s Bears and Bees Birthday Party
Rebecca G’s What are Little Boys Made Of?
We’ve just added “dessert table” to the showcase section on everyone’s party page. When you’re adding a new party (or editing an old one), please drag a photo of your gorgeous dessert table into the “dessert table” box.
This way it’s easier for me to show off all your lovely dessert tables in my blog, and for people to browse through them in the “browse photos” section of the site.
Also, please let me know what you think and if there are any other categories we should be adding.
Here are some of our favorite Halloween desserts from the parties on our site. How creative and delicious are these!!
Nina D’s Halloween Party
Kim S’s Halloween Glam Dessert Table
Oh Goodie Designs’ Ghostly Goodies
Party Box Design’s Spooky Sweet Halloween Treats Party
Brandi V’s Twilight Inspired Halloween Party
Kate H’s Mummy’s Night Out
The Savvy Mom’s Guide’s Spooktacular Play Party
De Anna M’s Shriya’s 3rd Birthday Halloween Bash
Missy D’s Pumpkin Carving Party
I’m starting a new desserts feature where I highlight an insanely great dessert on our site. The first dessert I’m featuring is from
Nicole W’s Under the Sea Tea Party
When I saw these cupcakes with their handmade tea sets on them I almost died. And yes, the tea sets are all individually hand sculpted (out of gumpaste) and hand painted by Nicole.
I was so excited about the cupcakes and tea pot I had to contact Nicole (who is not a professional cake designer, by the way) to ask her how she did this incredible work. Here’s what she said:
Once I had the vision for the tower of cupcakes topped with a teapot cake, I have to admit, I coached my daughter toward that theme. Happily, it was a theme she really liked, anyway!
I spent a good chunk of one day forming the basic shapes of the tea sets out of gumpaste. Four hours? Five perhaps? I tend to lose track of time when I dive into a project like this, but I know it took quite a while!
The basic shapes are really very easy, it’s a lot like being back in preschool playing with play-dough.
I used the “wrong” end of cake decorating tips to cut out the circles for the plates and the miniature cake plates.
The end of a Sharpie pressed into the center of the plates made the perfect indentation. The teacups were the hardest to come up with a satisfying technique. I tried empty cups, but they all looked like the mug I’d made my mother when I was three.
Eventually, I just made gumpaste balls, flattened and flared and squished one side to make a flared teacup shape, then used a very sharp knife to score a circle where the “tea” should be.
They looked good after I formed the tea sets, but they really came to life when I hand-painted them the next day.
Again, it was hours of labor. I used the tiniest, thinnest paintbrush I could find in the craft store–and when doing detail work like this, having a quality brush makes a big difference!
My “paint” was Americolor gel food coloring thinned with vodka. The gold on the rims was gold luster dust mixed with vodka and painted on.
The cupcakes were all our favorite chocolate cake recipe. It’s an old depression era recipe called Crazy Cake (also Wacky Cake and a couple other names).
It doesn’t have any eggs, butter, or milk in the recipe, but it’s so moist and deliciously chocolatey, and easier than a box mix! The teapot cake was vanilla, just in case a guest wasn’t a fan of chocolate.
The teapot cake was pretty simple. I used a Wilton Sports Ball pan to make the round shape, and baked off a little of the batter in a custard dish to get the small disk of cake for the lid.
The handle and spout were the only non-edible part of the cake, and were made with a lightweight foam-like modeling clay product that Crayola makes, available in any major craft store with all the other crayola stuff.
It’s lightweight enough that there’s no problem with the spout slowly obeying gravity and destroying the cake; that’s sometimes a problem if you make the spout and handle out of fondant or gumpaste.
Add a few fondant flowers, gumpaste pearl strings, and aerosol luster dust, and you have a teapot!
Thank you, Nicole, for sharing with us how you did all this! Every time I look at the photos I’m still so blown away.
To learn more about Nicole, check out her blog, Tradewind Tiaras. And to see more of her gorgeous cakes and parties, check out her Strawberry Picnic 1st Birthday and her Rainbow Unicorn 5th Birthday on our site.
