Baking Is My Way of Saying I LOVE YOU but it can be VERY frustrating!

I love to cook! It is my favorite form of creative expression. I’ll spend hours pouring over recipes and assembling menus the same way most girls obsess over fashion magazines. Cookie molds and piping bags, bundt pans and silicon spatulas; these are a few of my favorite things. The feeling I get from feeding the people I love is the same as the one I get when I eat chocolate – warm, happy and kind of mushy inside. So when I get the chance to cater for someone I care about I go a little (okay a lot) insane. Hours and hours and hours are spent assembling food options with pictures courtesy of Pinterest. There are multiple appetizer choices, salad choices, main course choices and of course many, many dessert ideas. So when my boss/friend asked me cater a party for her last weekend I was over the moon. OH THE FUN! THE RAPTURE! Feed people I love and show off my greatest talent. CAN’T. WAIT.

Now admittedly, I bit off ALMOST more than I could handle. The menu I put together included not one, but two desserts I have never attempted before as well as items that had to be made day of and assembled on site. Even worse, a couple of the desserts were precision items – TARTLETS and CANNOLI BITES. Tarts/tartlets are HARD. Cannoli bites are even harder. They both require the exactly measured ingredients, mixed in a precise way and then patiently fostered into the correct shapes. Any deviation will result in catastrophe. A change in humidity can be the difference between sublime and shit. There is no winging it when baking either of these mouthfuls. 

This is a problem for me. I am a bit more creative/fluid with measuring and mixing and tend to stick to desserts and foods that allow for this. So why I thought these tartlets were a good idea is a bit baffling. Maybe it’s because the pictures were so darn cute. Or because on the surface they didn’t look all that hard.  MAN was I WRONG. The tarts almost broke me. There was a moment in my kitchen where I was on the verge of tears talking to my dough, begging it to behave. “Please don’t crack. Please, please, please stick together.”

You know it’s bad when your dog is giving you looks of compassion mixed with concern. I swear to God if Snoopy knew how to dial a phone he would have called in reinforcements. Instead he just sat right at the edge of the kitchen silently lending moral support... and waiting for me to drop more butter on the floor.  Thankfully, everything ended up turning out wonderfully but honestly it was touch and go there a few times.  

Here are some pictures to make you hungry and the menu with links to the recipes. Happy Friday my friends!

Menu and links

Caprese skewers

Deviled berries

Mojito fruit salad in waffle cones

Creamy Chicken Pasta Salad

Tea Sandwiches

Mini Red Velvet Cupcakes with Cream Cheese Frosting

Mini Nutella Chocolate Cupcakes with Nutella Buttercream Frosting

Mini French Vanilla Cupcakes with Raspberry Frosting

Chocolate Caramel Cheesecake Tartlets

Cannoli Bites

PS. Some of my favorite food blogs which are in the recipe links above are sallysbakingaddiction.com,bakingamoment.com, cookingclassy.com, iowagirleats.com and foodnetwork.com