MOMMY'S SWEET CONFESSIONS: macarons

The dessert spread...strawberry with homemade pound cake, funfettie and devils food cupcakes with butter cream frosting, no bake nutella oreo cheesecakes, gluten/dairy free brownies, two kinds of macarons, monster cookie dough truffles, and on the very left, pie crust fries.

Well, the day finally came. Our youngest son's 1st birthday party! I went ALL out for our older son's thrid birthday party, which you can see here. That was only a month ago, and I was still exhausted from that one, so I decided to scale back and just do a dessert party. If you haven't figured it out already, I love making desserts. I had a list a mile long of ideas. What you see in these pictures has been pared down from a much longer list than what it started, and things I had every intention of making got cut from the menu even up to that day, once I started putting out the food, seemed like it would be too much. I was right. Just for kicks, I was going to have caramel popcorn, then downgraded that to buttered popcorn, then dropped it all together. I was also going to do chocolate and caramel dipped hard pretzels, those didn't make the cut either. It was good though, there was a ton as it was.

The first thing I need to do is give a huge thanks to Larry Berger Photography for the incredible photos taken at the party, I am so thankful to have a photographer as a father! (As are his non photo-shy grand kids).

Secondly, I am not in any way creative, and all the cute signs and printables were the Little Peanut the Elephant Customized Printables package from. Fantastic product, wonderful customer service, and they have hundreds of party package designs. I couldn't find the shop on Etsy at the moment, but the link goes to their blog.

These cute little swirly suckers I got from the Oriental Trading Company, and added some of the printable labels from the Dimpleprints pack. Absolutely perfect for the theme.

Labels from Dimpleprints, lollypops from Oriental Trading Company

As with any party, the food is the biggest attraction, second to our birthday boy. Below are some of the most insanely delicious and uber chocolatey fudgy brownies I have ever had. Not only that, but they were gluten and dairy free! We had several family members with dietary restrictions, and I think I can happily say, that with these, they did not feel like they were missing out on anything, because they were insanely delicious! I will be doing a recipe post on these later, but the recipe was from Katrina over at Gluten Free Godess. I will never make regular brownies again.

The lovely green and orange gems pictured below are my Andes mints macarons (green) and my boysenberry jam filled macarons (orange). The orange ones also worked great for those on a gluten or dairy restrictive diet.

These are my go to favorite for those that don't have much of a sweet tooth, like my husband. Of course, I covered half of them in cinnamon sugar, but these are homemade soft buttered pretzels with either salt or cinnamon sugar topping. Went great with the circus theme too!

In the back of the picture you can see a container on the left with little wrapped candies, those are my peppermint salt water taffy's I made as well.

Here is a drool worthy close up of the cinnamon sugar pretzels...I won't lie, was I pretty proud of how they came out.

Here we have a dessert for the non chocolate lovers--homemade pound cake (King Arthur Flour inspired) with fresh strawberries and whipped cream. I think it is one of my new favorite desserts. Simple, light, refreshing, and just yummy.

I love nutella, I had to have a nutella dessert, and in fact, I had several. I worked very hard though to whittle it down to one. I decided on this no bake nutella oreo cheesecake cup. It was slightly adapted from My Baking Addiction's No Bake Nutella Cheesecake recipe. If you like nutella, or cheesecake, or oreos...this is your dessert! My husband isn't a big fan of any of those things, and he was just loving these to pieces!

I adore King Arthur Flour's website, blog, recipes, and products. I follow them on Facebook and was fortunate enough to see a post a few weeks ago about Pie Crust Fries. I saw that and I immediately put those on my list of things to make for the party. I mean really, how cute is this?? Covered in cinnamon and sugar, put in fry containers I got on the Oriental Trading Company's site, and with labels from Dimpleprints.

We had so much (even after cutting back and not making everything), that I got to send everyone home with to-go containers (yes, I have a pack of take out containers from Sam's just for this reason) full of goodies. I love being able to share the foodie love. And...I do not need to be left alone with all these goodies! That would be so bad for the diet....

Now, on the the highlight of the party. Our photo booth! I was good, I didn't plan any silly games, or much of anything at all, but the one thing I had to have was a "photo booth." I decorated an area in our house, bought some silly mustache props and some clown noses, and made (yes, you can ask, I made them do it) everyone take a turn taking some funny pictures. I am so glad that I did, because they are absolutely priceless!!! I am going to be polite and only post pictures of us, but let me tell you, every photo of every guest was just fantastic and priceless!

This is my wonderful husband, and our rambunctious but darling three year old. He wears that clown nose and funny glasses with just a little too much ease :)

**Note--After discussions with my husband as to whether or not our kids should be pictured on the blog, we decided we would, but I have removed any personal information from the pictures for safety reasons, so if there is an area in a picture that looks a bit funny, it is because of my poor photo shopping job, and in no way the photographer's doing.**

This would be me and my hunny doing our photo booth photo. Can't make everyone else do it if I refused to, right? I am a good sport like that. The background for the photo both is just tablecloths cut lengthwise and strung from our chandelier to the wall. The banner is another great printable from the party pack from Dimpleprints.

Must have one of the whole family! The birthday boy was more interested in eating the mustache than wearing it, but what do you expect?

Since we did a photo shoot last week for the birthday boy, in which I made a two layer cake with butter cream frosting for him to destroy in his pictures, I decided to cheap out on it for the party. I just took a cupcake and covered it in whipped cream. I figured it would be an easier mess to clean up. I think he knew that he got cheated, he wasn't very in to making any mess. Good for me, bad for the photo ops. Thank goodness for that photo shoot the week before! Mess or not, he was still a very happy little guy with his cupcake.

The hardest part of the party was trying to convey to our three year old that these presents are not for him, that he can not "help" his brother by opening them all for him, and that the gifts inside are not his, but his brother's. This is him do his "sad walk." In other words, he was MAJORLY pouting. His brother was not particularly concerned about it it seems. More interested in the hangers. We are still trying to convince the elder one that these new toys are his brothers and not his...not going well.

Well that was pretty much the party. Eating, pictures, birthday cake for the birthday boy, and presents. Short(ish), sweet, and simple (kinda). I had a blast planning it, loved all the different desserts I got to make, and enjoyed getting to share the big milestone of the youngest having his first birthday with all of our family that came.

Pin It Now! On the recommendation of my brother, my family and I went down to Merely Sweets Bakery in Brea, CA since we were right down the sidewalk at Farell's Ice Cream Parlor.

Picture from Kat's 9 Lives blog

When you walk in, it is a very clean, contemporary, somewhat stark design that really allows the desserts to shine. They were displayed very nicely, with a few cakes, several kinds of cupcakes, a few cookies, and a beautiful display of macarons. They had much less out than I thought they would for a bakery, but I don't know if that is because it was a late sunday afternoon and they were running out, or they just only have a few items.

I am a die hard nutella fan, so when my husband saw they had a nutella cupcake, he pretty much had that ordered right off the bat...he knows me well :) My brother was going on about macarons earlier that day, even lent me a book on making them, so I had to try one to see what it was all about. I got the salted caramel macaron. In the picture below from Kat's 9 Lives, you can see what the salted caramel macaron looks like, it is the one on the bottom left. It was wrapped up in a nice little bag all by itself, very cute.

The nutella cupcake was wrapped in an individual box and they were both put it another bag. The prices are a bit high, but for artisinal sweets, I guess it is expected. Here is the nutella cupcake, photo also from Kat's 9 lives.

I lovingly protected my stash all the way home. This is what it looked like when it went in the box, but when I got home and opened it, even though it hadn't tipped over in the box or anything, the frosting had split and completely slid off. That was disappointing. I decided to blow all my remaining calories for the day, and indulge in my treats since I didn't know how they would keep. I started with the macaron. First off, I LOVE caramel. The first bite was heavenly!! It was salty, sweet, and very caramely. I was so sad I only had one. The shell was crisp on the outside, slightly chewy on the inside, and I was hooked on macarons right then and there.

With the bar set so high, I was looking forward to the cupcake, even if the frosting did slide off. I unceremoniously put it back on, grabbed a fork, and dug in. This is where my happiness ends. Having eating many, many, many containers of nutella, I know what it tastes like. I can honestly say that I could not discern a lick of nutella taste from the cupcake or the frosting. The cake was kind of dense, not a very fine crumb, and not as chocolaty as I would have imagined. The frosting is where the worst offense was though. It was like a mouth full of grainy, sugary, shortening laden paste. It had no chocolate flavor, absolutely no nutella flavor, and it was not flavored of anything really other than sugar and butter or shortening (not normally a bad thing, if there is some other flavor to go with it). It was so unpleasant, I was so bummed. I ate it only because I spent almost 3 bucks on it. Wasn't going to waste the money.

I really expected more from a bakery that looked as nice as this. The presentation on everything was beautiful. The macarons where to die for. The nutella cupcake though, such a disappointment. It is very possible that it is just my opinion and expectations for frosting, but when you say nutella, in my opinion (and this is all this is), it should taste like nutella, not a mouth full of sugar with no other discernible flavor.

I would definitely go back for the caramel macarons, but I won't be buying any cupcakes any time soon.