We discussed my love of kit themed gifts last week and this week it's my ongoing interest in make your own desserts.
Last year we hosted the dessert house for our neighborhood progressive dinner and I put together a hot chocolate bar. I usually like to mix up the houses we host from year to year (there's an appetizer, main course and dessert house), but I had another idea and I was too excited not to host dessert two years in a row.
I got piles of little trifle cups at the local dollar store. I liked that they were small so people could grab a couple and make different combinations. We baked chocolate and yellow cakes. Then we made vanilla pudding, chocolate pudding and whipped cream. The cakes were mixes and it was jello pudding, but the whip cream was freshly made from heavy cream and powdered sugar.
We made my mom's fudge sauce and got a jar of caramel sauce at the store. I smashed frozen strawberries with some sugar to make a strawberry sauce. We also cooked some chopped apple in brown sugar and butter for "caramel apples". I mixed some pulverized oreo crumbs with melted butter and froze them to make an oreo pie crust crumble (that's one of the best tricks my mom has taught me).
We had mini peanut butter cups, heath bar bits and some peppermint crunch. Finally Sean quickly sliced a little bowl of bananas right before everyone walked in the door.
Can you imagine some chocolate cake and pudding with oreos, peanut butter cups and health bar...with bananas and a generous dollop of whip cream? That's what I had and it was darn good. Sean managed to devour three different combinations...and that was after being at a party full of food all night long. Thankfully we made double of everything, so our neighbors could still get some dessert when Sean wasn't hogging it.
