The Birthday Dessert Bar!

I have been planning this for a long time now! I have developed 
an obsession with stalking dessert bar blogs and ogling at how 
amazingly talented the people are who create them! So I
decided I wanted to have a go at one myself.  I decided my colour theme would be brown and green and so to go along with that everything was chocolate or mint or both! I spent the whole of last week baking in preparation, so I baked one new thing each evening and then froze everything up until the big day!  My sister Mara baked the whoopies since she has been busy developing a whoopie pie range for her company so I figured I'd leave it to the pro! and I left the bunting to my scrapbooking pro sister Mel.  My Mom provided the yummy Root Beer, which our whole family is 
crazy about (and of course it fitted with the brown colour theme!) and everything else on the table was baked by me.
I'll give you a little break down of what we had.....

The Cupcake centre piece, these were my favourite mint oreo cupcakes with an oreo baked into the base of the cupcake.  You can also see one of my brand new cupcake stands that I got for my birthday here (I got a whole lot of cupcake goodies as presents that I will blog about in the next few days!)

These were little sweetie jars filled with coconut M&M's, green apple and juicy pear Jelly Belly's and maltesers.

Next we have the fabulous whoopies, they were chocolate flavoured with a cheesecake filling (tinted green).

After that, we have some brownie pops.  They weren't quite the shape I was hoping for, but it was my first time making them so I guess perfection comes with practice! These brownies were covered in melted mint aero and rolled in green sanding sugar.

These are some mini cupcakes that were made using the same mixture as the Oreo cupcakes you saw earlier, but instead of Oreo frosting I went with a basic vanilla buttercream (tinted green) and topped with a little wedge of peppermint crisp (a chocolate bar only available in South Africa...so thanks to my grandparents-in-law for bringing me some over!!)

Then we have the cake pops.  These were mint chocolate cupcakes that are then crumbled to pieces.   I mixed in some swiss meringue buttercream to the crumbled cake mess, rolled them into balls, after freezing they were dipped in green candy melts and finished off with a mini brown smartie.

And last, but definitely not least (I think these were the fave of the whole dessert bar), are the Oreo balls. These are crushed up Oreos mixed in with some cream cheese, and then after being frozen they are dipped in mint chocolate and finished off with a sprinkling of peppermint crisp.

And here we are, the two birthday girls, about to enjoy the feast before us!

I was pretty pleased with how it all turned out! The family were certainly impressed! I know it doesn't look as perfect or as polished as the ones you see on the dessert bar blogs but for my first time I felt it couldn't have gone better!  It did take a LOT of work though, so I think I'm going to try and enjoy a week free of baking...I feel I've earned it, starting tomorrow though because this evening I have been baking birthday cupcakes to take into work!