Spring Dinner Party

This past weekend was quite the crazy weekend! We bought a new 4x4 SUV for C to take to Aspen, where he is starting a new job and then he began his 19 hour drive on Saturday afternoon. I dropped Miss F off at my parents for the evening and distracted myself in the best way I know how: a girly dinner party. I busied myself with preparing the meal, all the while there was a crazy thunderstorm brewing outside. The weather was madness, parts of Houston flooded, many areas got hail and it was just a big old mess. Luckily for me, my friends are all troopers. And every one made it to the party!

I ordered the my go to cheap napkins from Amazon, gathered up my dollar store fishbowls and headed to the flower markets for some hydrangeas. The first market didn't have any, so he offered to go across the street. I decided it was easier to just go there myself and when I got there, all they had was white and they wanted $7 a stem. I had looked at hydrangeas at the grocer the day prior and I knew I could get three stems for $6, so the choice was obvious. I headed over to HEB and they had a gorgeous selection. I choose pink, blue and white to coordinate with the menus that I had made.

We started the evening with brie with baguette and strawberries and bite sized crabcakes with crabcake sauce (I really need to think of a better name for this.) We all sipped on champagne and discussed the crazy weather. While we ate I warmed the artichoke soup that I had made the day prior. I always serve a soup with dinner, it has become a thing ever since I got the soup bowls for my china pattern. When the soup was served, I removed the slow roasted beef tenderloin from the oven to rest. In went the truffled potatoes and roasted asparagus to cook while the tenderloin was resting. This meal was really easy to get together and I made it work with my single oven.

After our meal, we had pink zebra cake for dessert. The cake was a riot. I had made it the night before and it was one big old mess. Each layer came out in two pieces. I decided to toss my cake pans because I have had issues with the last five cakes I have baked in them. The new pans arrive from Amazon today. I knew I could make the cake work, but I worried that the zebra effect would be ruined. Then it was time to make the chocolate cream cheese frosting. And I was a half a cup short of the confectioner’s sugar. We have a Walgreens and a Family Dollar store a couple blocks from my house. I went to both. Neither had confectioner’s sugar. I debated buying a big bag of powdered sugar doughnuts and shaking it off, but I knew that would be silly. At this point I should have just driven to the grocery store, but I turned to Google instead. I learned that you could make confectioner’s sugar by processing sugar in a food processor. I figured it was only half a cup… I whirred and whirred and whirred. The sugar looked pretty powdery, so I added it to the frosting. And the frosting tasted pretty grainy to me. It hadn’t processed nearly enough to get the smooth texture that confectioner’s sugar provides. The next day I bought three bags of confectioner’s sugar when I bought the hydrangeas. I am not running out of it ever again!

Much thanks to all my lovely friends who showed up in the nasty weather to attend my dinner party. It was a sad day for me, but spending the evening with such wonderful girlfriends really did make everything feel a little bit better.

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