Our Christening service was due to finish mid morning, so it would have been a tad early to plan a luncheon which was the original idea. So the idea of a 'brunch' celebration was born. I did find it a little difficult to come up with suitable brunch options that I was able to make ahead and just serve up when I walked through the door with visitors in tow. There is nothing worse than slaving away in the kitchen whilst your guests are sipping champagne is there?!
These were a little fiddly to do, but looked so cute! I found this little idea on Pinterest (of course). To create perfect little pancake stacks, I simply cut shapes out of pikelets using a small round cutter. If you wanted to take a shortcut you could simply cut from ready-made pikelets from the Supermarket. I then popped a bit of whipped cream and a small slice of strawberry in between each layer and used a tooth pick to hold it all together.
I really, really, really wanted to attempt to make the croissants myself - I even purchased a cookbook with a recipe to make them - honestly!! But in the end I ran out of time, so I purchased the croissants from my local Supermarket and filled these with a variety of cheeses and some with shaved ham. I lightly toasted these before serving so that they warm (with gooey cheese mmm) when I served them up.
My lovely mother in law helped me out by making up a big batch of fruit salad for me. I served this up in plastic wine goblets that I had decorated with the very same ribbon used on the candy jars. The wooden cutlery was stamped with 'brodie'. The fruit salad was topped with a large dollop of gourmet vanilla bean yoghurt - I could seriously eat this stuff by the truckload!!
I recently stumbled across the most fabulous recipe for these muffins and have been making it ever since to rave reviews. If you are a bit of a fan of this muffin flavour, do let me know and I'll feature the recipe on the blog. These muffins unfortunately are best on the day of making, so I was up at some crazy hour baking them up. I used baking cups in blue and green spot to match the theme. I normally measure out the quantity to ensure that I get even shaped muffins, however I just didn't have the chance to do this in the morning rush.
My lovely Mummy made these for me!! It just wouldn't be a brunch with any form of eggs (and bacon) for that matter, so mini quiches were a no brainer brunch item.
If there is one thing that I would love to learn to make - it is the macaroon. If anyone has any tips, tricks or recipes please let me know as I am scared stiff of even trying these out. These were purchased through a french patisserie local to me and I purchased in colours to match my theme - of course!!
I don't think any party of mine would be complete without a little bit of candy!! The jars were filled with gourmet jelly beans and marshmallows in complementary colours. I also made some personalised wrappers and used them to cover Aldi branded chocolate bars.
And last but not least - the cake!! For those of you who have been following me on Facebook, you will know that the cake was a labour of love. I have never ever attempted to use fondant and in hindsight I probably should have done a test run. But it was a great learning experience for me to say the least!! I used ready to roll fondant in baby blue and another one in vanilla to make the polka-dots. The actual cake was a white chocolate mud cake. I am leaving it to the pros when Mr B's first birthday does roll around in a few short months.
I set up a little drink station that had fruit infused water and filled mini glass bottles with apple and orange juices. There was another station (not pictured) that had some grown up beverages too - no celebration is complete without some bubbles after all!
If you are planning a little brunch celebration for an occassion such as Father Day, Christmas or Easter, there might just be a few little ideas here that you can include on your menu. If you need any further information on any of the above, please contact me. Alternatively if you have a fabulous an easy brunch idea that you'd love to share, please let me know.
Fantastic effort Allison! You did such a great job catering AND styling your event. I'm not game to try fondant either and my cake decorating efforts so far have been a bit average so for Master almost-one's upcoming birthday I've bought the lion pack from Cakes 2 the Rescue ... I'll let you know how it goes!