We had our Big Summer Blowout a couple of weeks ago and I have not had a chance to blog about it. We had some exciting times before it and I learned a good lesson about asking other people for help and actually getting things done ahead of time. We had water in the basement the night before the party and I hadn’t started more than one thing.
There were several panicked texts to friends and one of them even baked the Husband some lovely chocolate chip cookies!
Here’s the table pictures:
I think there are more, but the Husband took the pictures for me and I forgot to specify.
I made a couple of new recipes for the party and some older ones. I made an enormous bowl of pico for the Husband. The biggest Pyrex bowl we have was pressed into service and the Husband was super happy.
It was full of garden tomatoes and jalepenos! I had four kinds of tomatoes. Yellow tomatoes, Cherokee purple, Romas, and some cherry tomatoes. It was delicious and not too spicy.
I also made a fruit pizza! I used a couple of different recipes, one of which was the crust from this recipe: https://sallysbakingaddiction.com/fruit-pizza/
I used the Pampered Chef pizza stone and it was delicious! I did jazz up the cream cheese by adding orange extract and zest to it.
It does indeed look it was bitten… We’ll just pretend that I was going for the “monster ate it” look…
We also had vanilla cupcakes that were supposed to be toadstools, but turned into watermelon. What can I say? Cupcake decorating isn’t really my strong suit.
They had pineapple sage jam in the middle. I did use a really good buttercream recipe from this website: https://www.bakedbyanintrovert.com/basic-vanilla-buttercream-frosting/
It was pretty delicious frosting and I would definitely make it again. The cupcakes were a white cake recipe from the Better Homes and Gardens book.
We also had two different types of cheesecake bars, but I don’t have a good picture of them. One was Oreo Cheesecake and the second one was Chocolate Covered Key Lime bars. I can’t find the Oreo Cheesecake recipe, which I swore I put on my Pinterest. Hmm… I’ll keep looking about it. Here is the Key Lime cheesecake recipe though.
https://www.barbarabakes.com/chocolate-covered-key-lime-cheesecake-bites/
I made homemade pickles from one of the summer Food Network magazines and they were pretty good. Had to have a good pickle tray, after all!
We tried Puff Pastry cheese swirls, but I didn’t really like them. I just put cheese and spices in puff pastry and baked it for around 20 minutes. Perhaps you will have better luck with experimenting.
We had a meat and cheese tray, crackers, little pigs in blankets, and a friend also brought a veggie tray with hummus and pita chips.
It was a very fun party! We enjoyed our friends’ company and are looking forward to having more company in the fall. Fancy, of course, adored the company.
I’m attempting to get my blogging back in order. We have been very busy lately. Also, I have developed sewing related tendonitis and have been having difficulty keeping up with my responsibilities when they mean moving my thumb much. Wish me luck for a fast recovery. Maybe send the Husband Legos too, to help him deal with me not being able to sew!
