Welcome to the home of more sugar than you can possibly imagine! For the last eighteen years, I've been throwing a massive dessert party for my birthday. This started because when I moved to Seattle, I didn't know anyone at first (nobody else was going to throw a party for me), so I decided to bake my own cake. The apartment I'd just moved in to had an oven with a thermostat 100 degrees off, and my birthday cake was my first attempt to bake in it. The result was a charred disaster that smoked up the kitchen and was scraped into the garbage. The next year, I decided to do it right, and make several desserts, including baklava, some mousse, and some truffles. The year after I made a few more things, and then it kind of got out of hand. Each year now I make 10 or 12 fancy desserts, sometimes around a special theme, and invite lots of friends over to help me eat them. Some of the desserts are from my collection of cookbooks (I've got a shelf full of dessert cookbooks at this point), and some are my own variations or creations. The cookbooks are linked from here directly to their entries at Amazon.com, in case you decide you just have to have them!.
The theme for the 2005 Dessert Party was JurassRick Park, and dinosaurs were everywhere. I had tiki torches along the front walk, a dinosaur backdrop on the front window, and set up the table as a tour through the park.
The Hatching Ground
The Gateau Grand Marnier returns in yet another guise. Caramelized sugar nests with chocolate easter eggs for dinosaur eggs.
The Stegosaurus
A yellow butter cake with mocha buttercream frosting, studded with toasted almonds and chocolate chips.
The Pterodactyl Cheesecake
A very yummy cheesecake with graham cracker crust and a few guards.
Brontosaurus Lake
A white chocolate cake with lemon buttercream frosting, with a blueberry sauce lake for the brontosauruses to swim in.
The Tar Pit
A blackberry cobbler, swallowing a few very lucky dinorsaurs (what a way to go!)
The Volcano
I didn't quite get the presentation I was hoping for on this one, my cup was a little too big for the hole in the top of the cake, but the chocolate cake with milk chocolate buttercream frosting went great with the raspberry sauce lava.
The Dig
A dark chocolate cake with pistachio buttercream frosting, studded with toasted pistachios and sliced to show the strata beneath.
The Petrafied Log
A very thin sponge cake spread with melted chocolate and rolled, with chocolate bark and bugs in amber. The bugs are made from pecans and almonds coated in caramelized sugar, which makes a very convincing amber.
The Headquarters Building
Every Zoo needs an entrance building, but sadly most aren't made of ladyfingers, chocolate mousse, whipped cream, and rum soaked bananas.
Mom's Plum Cake
Not really prehistoric, but like the inevitable baklava, it needs no excuse.
Edible Palm Trees
I was very proud of the palm trees I made for the center of the table. The trunks are cookies, the fronds are made of melted chocolate spread onto parchment on cardboard forms, and the base and caps are made of chocolate and corn syrup. Totally edible (and yummy)! The boulders in the background are grand marnier truffles and peanut butter truffles.
An Overall View
The Aftermath
About half an hour after cutting into the desserts it looked like this!
