...and then there was cake.

The big birthday bash has come and gone. It was a very busy weekend: shopping on Friday, baking all day Saturday, and then the festivities on Saturday evening.

Here was our menu, with links to recipes used, if available:

Savory

An assortment of crackers, baked flour tortilla chips, and toasted baguette slices

Crudite and Hummus (store-bought)
Smoked Salmon Dip
Warm Spinach and Artichoke Dip
Pasta Salad (brought by friend)
Homemade Roasted Sweet Potato Fries
Assorted Puff Pastry Hor's Doeuvres (bought; Costco)

Sweet
Kid's Thumbprints with Orange Marmalade or Blackberry Jam (Baking: From My home to yours, pg. 163)
Chocolate Toffee Cookies
Tate's Bake Shop Thin and Crispy Cookies

Tiramisu (made by friend)
Black and White Chocolate Cake (Baking: From My home to yours, pgs. 258-260)

Party Favors
One big fat chocolate chip cookie (the famed NYTimes recipe)

So I actually have a pitiful number of pictures of the party, and even more pitiful is that I forgot to take my usual shots of the whole spread of food, which makes me very sad because we had such a nice bounty of stuff, and I labeled everything with little notecards. In my defense, the hor's doeuvres were rolling out of the oven continuously for a while so I wouldn't have had a complete picture before the party got going. But I guess that means I'll just have to throw another nice birthday party next year to make up for the lack of pictures this year, haha.

Comments about the food:
The spinach and artichoke dip was DELICIOUS. That is definitely a keeper recipe, and if you don't have a food processor, I bet if you just chopped up the spinach and artichoke a bit and mixed everything evenly together, it would equally gooey and delicious. The smoked salmon dip was good, I think a little salty, but that may be because I added more salmon than I was supposed to and probably should have cut the salt in the recipe to compensate. The puff pastry hor's doeuvres from Costco were very good. Yummy butter puff pastry and a good selection of fillings. The pasta salad disappeared very quickly, and the sweet potato fries likewise were depleted within minutes.

Comments about the desserts:
Yes, I did make 5 different recipes (4 cookies, 1 cake) for the party. Yes, I am crazy. But yes, they were all delicious. Pictured below are the thumbprints and the NYTimes cookie. The big hit of the evening was the chocolate toffee cookies. I got a lot of positive comments about that one. They came out like brownies in sturdy cookie form--deep chocolate flavor, moist and chewy, a little bit of caramely flavor and nut crunch. (There are some good pictures of the chocolate toffee cookies at the site I linked to for the recipe.) The cake was awesome, with way-too-easy-to-make-pastry-cream. The white chocolate whipped cream I think I overwhipped and it curdled on me, but I salvaged enough of it to put on the cake and survive to tasting.

And here are a few pictures I do have of at least some of the cookies and of me cutting my cake:

The photographer of the above picture (David S.) laughed at me for cutting my cake in symmetrical cuts. What. I'm just a tad OCD. I got 16 identical slices out of it, though, which was just perfect for everyone to get a slice.

Kids' Thumbprint Cookies

NYTimes Cookie, in the palm of my hand for scaling. Gigantic, chewy, yummy.