Book Review: Eat More Dessert By Jenny Keller

I recently was at Barnes & Noble and stopped in my tracks when I saw the cover of Jenny Keller's beautiful book Eat More Dessert.  Not only are the photographs in the book stunning, but the book provides easy to follow step-by-step instructions for creating amazing dessert tables.  The book also provides amazing party decor advice as well. What I especially like about this book is how Keller makes creating dessert tables approachable to the average person. I love that her go-to cake recipe is just doctored-up store bought boxed cake mix and she has a great buttercream frosting recipe as well. While I have yet to master Keller's frosting piping techniques I know that I will be using the beautiful dessert tables that are photographed in the book as inspiration for years to come. This book is perfect for anyone who is looking for ways to incorporate dessert tables into there next event or for the avid baker who is looking for some inspiration. You can purchase the book on Amazon or at your local Barnes & Noble. I hope you enjoy the book as much as I do!

beautiful book cover and pictures from the book

Photo Courtesy of: The TomKat Studio

Hydrangea Flower Pot Cupcakes

Photo Courtesy of:  Queen Latifah's Blog

Garden Party Dessert Party

Photo Courtesy of: Little Farmstand

Vintage Baby Shower

Photo Courtesy of: Bird's Party Blog

Pink & Gold Princess Party

These are pictures from a pink and gold princess party photo shot I did. I have seen a lot beautiful pink ombre princess parties on various blogs and websites, which had given me a lot of great ideas so I knew it was time to put those ideas into action.  I also love glitter and wanted to add a little sparkle to the party as well. 

The first thing I did for this party was make the gold crown cupcake toppers. I made the cupcake toppers by cutting crowns out of plain computer paper. I then painted the paper with gold paint and then added glitter to the wet gold paint. I also created gold glitter mason jars, which I made by applying mod podge to the mason jars and then applied glitter to the mod podge. 

I also made a tissue paper tassel garland with gold and different shades of pink tissue paper. I followed this tutorial: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=f71yVgdmisw to learn how to make the tassels. I then added the tassels to white ribbon. I also made a cake topper by using two pink stripped straws and then added some gold and pink bunting to the straws. This was the one craft project that didn't work out as perfectly as I had hoped it would. The ribbon would not stick to the straws and the bunting didn't stay as straight as I wanted. I definitely will have to keep experimenting to get the cake bunting perfect.

Now for the delicious baked goods! I made cupcakes with pink frosting, a cake with pink ombre frosting, pink cake pops on pink stripped straws, star sugar cookies, pink ombre mini cakes, macaroons that I got from Trader Joe's and pink pudding that I served with pink jewel studded spoons. I decided to put the star sugar cookies on cake pop sticks in order to make the cookies look like princess wands. I made the mini cakes by dividing cake batter into separate bowls and adding food coloring to the different bowls so that the batter was different shades of pink. Once the cakes where baked and cooled I used a 2" round cookie cutter to make the cake into circles. For the pink ombre cake I divided white frosting into different bowls and then added food coloring to make the frosting different shades of pink. I then added the darkest frosting to the bottom of the cake and added the lighter shades to the top of the cake.