Birthday Dinner Party for Girls

Birthdays are less painful when you have friends to cook for you.

As I planned what I wanted to do for my birthday this year (a big one!) I remembered what one friend recently did for her wedding. To make it more affordable, and more personal, she rented a historic meeting hall for the reception and asked each guest to make something for dinner to share with the entire group. What a lovely idea! We would all be eating food made by those who loved them. Baked with love. Ok, some folks just bought cheese plates (they must not love them as much as others).

So I decided to do it too, a birthday dinner party for girls.

Some guests volunteered their specialty, and we assigned courses to others, and everyone came through. The girl who brought the cheese plate actually flew it here and surprised us all at the door! One guy showed up (he’s like one of the girls) and we forced him to make deviled eggs. And one girl had previously trained in France in the pastry arts, so we gave her dessert.

And, boy did she do dessert. She brought a coconut pineapple cream cake, shown here, as well as a mixed fruit tart (I love her crusts!) and some crack pie (a copy of the Momofuku one). It was heavenly dessert overload, and I enjoyed my sugar high for days. I’m now addicted to my friends.

They really did bake me some love.