Bachelorette Party Treats!

I have hosted my fair share of bachelorette parties... I think this last weekend brings my grand total to 4. This one was decidedly more low key than the others, but still really fun! The bride, Laura, is getting married in Aruba later this month, and very few of her friends can make it to the wedding. We wanted to have a little celebration with her before she ties the knot!

This was a great chance for me to try out a few recipes for sweets and appetizers. I decided on a menu of brownies, cupcakes, baked brie with crackers and apples, spinach artichoke bites, and chips and salsa. Since the wedding is in Aruba, we also had a tropical punch (first recipe on the page) to drink (with and without rum, as we had some mommies to be in the group!).

I started the day of baking and cleaning by making these brownies that I found on the blog Dinner & Dessert. I love normal brownies, but I wanted something a little more exciting, and these fit the bill! I was astounded by the number of eggs in this recipe (10 eggs and 2 egg yolks)... it almost put me off, but I'm glad I still made them. They were fairly easy to make and so delicious and rich!

pre-baking


out of the oven. My chocolate chips kind of sunk to the middle.


taste testing :)

The next thing to make was the cupcakes. Also because of the tropical nature of the wedding, I thought these Pina Colada Cupcakes from Annie's blog would be great! This is where I started to have some..... issues. I made a few mistakes with these cupcakes, resulting in near disaster :) First, somehow I missed that the baking powder and salt were to be sifted with the flour. I was out of it, I guess. I added both in at the very end. The major mistake was with the egg whites. I have never baked anything where you had to beat egg whites until "stiff peaks form" so I had no clue. A tiny bit of egg yolk got in with my whites due to my inept-ness at separating eggs, so apparently that was my main problem. I later learned that there needs to be absolutely no trace of yolk and nothing on the bowl you beat the eggs in or they will never form stiff peaks. Again, I had no clue so I figured after I beat them for a good 10 minutes I would just put them in with the batter. So I ended up with these monstrosities:

Ew

By this time it was about 4pm - I scoured the internet for another coconut cupcake recipe. Ben happened to be out and about so I called him to pick up the few extra things I needed for this coconut cupcake recipe, which thankfully turned out great!! I loved these cupcakes and would definitely recommend them. No silly egg separating required :) I still used Annie's recipe for the frosting which was the perfect way to top the cupcakes.

After all that, I was kind of running on empty. Luckily my savory treats were much more low maintenance :) Ben took pity on my poor soul, and made the filling for the spinach artichoke bites while I sat next to him to give my feet a rest :) I just had him make my normal spinach artichoke dip recipe and put it into phyllo cups - super easy!

My dip recipe is as follows:
8oz cream cheese
healthy scoop of mayo
healthy scoop of sour cream
some spinach, chopped (fresh or frozen - if frozen, thaw and squeeze with paper towels)
1 can quartered artichoke hearts, food processed to get out chunks
some romano cheese
some mozzarella cheese
3-4 cloves minced garlic
salt
pepper

Mix, and then normally I bake it for 30 minutes. This time I baked for less time since it was in little cups. It is oh so precise as you can see :) I just kind of put stuff in it until it looks right to me. I think the first "recipe" I used was this one. It is always a huge hit!

Now it was on to the baked brie. I used this recipe pretty much exactly, from the blog "Good Eats n' Sweet Treats". It was easy and delicious which was perfect :)

not exactly beautiful, but still tasted great :)

The food (and the party) was a success! Laura is a doctor in her first year of residency, so she unfortunately had worked 60 hours in the past 5 days (including 11 hours that day) thus the more laid-back nature of the gathering :)