I love planning events and parties. I don't know why, but I always get so excited -and possibly go a little overboard- when I plan a party, but I just can't help myself, I love it! Well, yesterday I got the chance to help out with a friend's bridal shower. I volunteered to bring some flowers and make some food.
I wanted to make some beautiful flower arrangements on a limited budget. So, instead of buying flowers, I thought hey it's fall, I'll just go pick some flowers. Actually I wasn't looking for flowers I was looking for wheat, but I found something else just as beautiful, grass. Yes, grass...and after picking a variety of grasses I had the bulk of my flower arrangements. I picked some sunflowers from my yard, arranged the flowers and grass, and tied some ribbon around the stems. Then I stuck the arrangements in some mason jars and ended up with some cheap and beautiful flower arrangements.
I wanted to keep the food simple but beautiful, so I had a few ideas that I wanted to try out. First, I thought of making brownie bites with a little surprise inside. So, I baked the brownies in a mini muffin tin with a maraschino cherry inside. Then I covered the brownie bites with chocolate ganache and a ganache covered cherry. They turned out delicious and they were so simple, you could even use a brownie mix to make them extra easy.
I also thought of making mini puff pastry fruit tarts. I bought the puff pastry and cut it into little squares and cooked the squares in a mini cupcake tin. Then I piped in a lemon cream cheese filling and topped the tarts with blackberries and red and white raspberries. I used apple jelly for the glaze and garnished them with mint. I thought they turned out beautiful and they were so tasty!
Lemon cream cheese filling:
A: 8 oz cream cheese
B: 12 oz sweetened condensed milk
C: 1/3 cup fresh lemon juice
D: 1 tsp lemon zest
E: 1 & 1/4 Cups whipping cream, whipped and not sweetened
Cream together A & B then mix in C &D then fold in E and refrigerate until use. This also makes a great pie when you pair it with a graham cracker crust. You can also substitute the lemons for limes to make a delicious key lime pie.
Then I made some mini pumpkin cupcakes with cream cheese frosting. I used my go-to cupcake recipe and used 1/2 cup of pumpkin and 3 Tbs of heavy cream instead of the strawberry puree and milk. I also added 1 tsp of cinnamon, 1/4 tsp ginger and 1/4 tsp of cloves to the flour mixture. I used my favorite cream cheese frosting recipe and piped out some chocolate hearts and put them on top of the cupcakes. They looked cute and tasted delicious.
So many people helped out and made so much amazing food. The bridal shower was definitely a success.
