Dessert First

We held our yearly school fundraiser a couple of weeks ago.  Les and I, with two other couples, offered spots to our cocktail party during the school’s silent auction.  The first two years we had a tiki party at our house, and for the last two years, we had “A Fistful of Cocktails” at Sandy and Brian’s place.  David and Paula bowed out this year, since it was just too much with David’s travel schedule.  We suckered talked Kevin and Suzanne into joining us this year.

The theme for our party this year was Atomic 60s!  What is Atomic 60s?  We defined Atomic 60s as the early 60s before the hippy movement started.  Think Mad Men.  We had a great time planning this party.  We kept to traditional cocktails like Screwdrivers and Cuba Libres, but it wouldn’t be an Atomic 60s party without Martinis! We served gin and vodka martinis (We also served flavored martinis. Flavored martinis weren’t period, but we were trying to make our modern guests happy.)
We researched party food appetizers from the 60s, and to shake the party up a bit, we set chairs and coffee tables up living room style (we even dragged an old sofa out to the pool deck).  Some of the seating areas had fire pits instead of coffee tables.  The evening got a bit cool, so the fire pits were very popular.  Les also pulled out our teardrop trailer and pink flamingos for fun props.

The guys wore short-sleeved white dress shirts and skinny ties on party night.  Sandy, Suzanne and I all dressed up in little black dresses, and we tried to do our hair and make-up in an early 60s style.  I cheated a little by having my make-up done at Beauty 360, and the girl doing my make-up did a great job.  I looked a little like Shirley McClain!  I was most impressed by the guests who came dressed up in a 60s style. Having them participate made everything more fun!

 

We served some fun appetizers and I will share the recipes later.  When it came to dessert, we decided to make Bundt and pineapple upside-down cakes and a Jell-O mold.  I was trying to decide what type of Bundt cake to make, when inspiration hit, and I remembered my mom serving grasshopper pie at some of her parties.   I also remember I wasn’t allowed to have a piece of her pie since it had alcohol in it.   I did some research on traditional grasshopper pies, and I tried three different recipes using three different techniques. My family was happy to taste test grasshopper pie recipes for me (I obviously am not as squeamish as my mom)!   I settled on a recipe using marshmallows to stabilize the filling.  I liked the taste and texture of the marshmallow mixture the best.  The filling was fluffy and taste was crisp with mint.  And, if you can believe it, I found my mom’s recipe after I had done all the testing.  Which one did she use?  The marshmallow pie of course!  Here is my mom’s recipe for Grasshopper Pie.

Grasshopper Pie

Printable Recipe 

20 Chocolate sandwich cookies

3 Tablespoons butter, melted

½ cup milk

3 cups miniature marshmallows

¼ cup crème de menthe

¼ cup clear crème de cacao

1 ½ cups whipping cream

Preheat the oven to 350°F

Place cookies in the bowl of a food processor and pulse until the cookies are ground to a fine crumb.  Pour in the melted butter and pulse until combined.  Press the cookie mixture into a 9-inch pie plate.  Bake the crust for 10 minutes.  Remove from the oven and cool completely.

Heat the milk and the marshmallows in a small saucepan until the marshmallows are melted.  Pour into a large bowl and cool completely.  Once the mixture is cool, add the crème de menthe and crème de cacao.

In a medium bowl, beat the whipping cream until stiff peaks form.  Fold the whipped cream into the marshmallow mixture and pour onto the cooled cookie crust.  Freeze for at least 4 hours or overnight.  Remove from freezer 10 minutes prior to serving. 

Fist Full of Cocktails Part II

Sandy and Brian’s backyard looked magical on the night of our fundraising party. We were lucky with the weather. It was a hot day and a warm evening, and we don’t get many of those in our area. Les was wondering why we couldn’t have had this kind of weather for the tiki party last year when we were shivering in our Hawaiian shirts and shorts. This year he was dressed in jeans and a long sleeved shirt (Oh, the irony). We set out the tabletop heaters in case the evening got a bit chilly, but we never needed them. Our guests really got into the theme this year digging western wear out of their closets, and coming ready to have a good time. You can plan the best party ever, but you need great guests for a great party, and we had them!
We consider our party a cocktail party, and my friend Melissa who came to help us out, said that it is only cocktail party because we don’t offer any utensils. Everything on the menu is considered finger food, so we can squeak by with no utensils, but this year we really pushed it. I told you about the menu items we passed and set on the tables in my last post. We also offered some other more substantial food on Sandy and Brian’s large patio table. We put out brisket sandwiches, ribs (Paula used a different recipe, but this one is close), tequila lime chicken wings, jalapeno corn bread, watermelon triangles, veggies and dip, and (this is where we pushed it) bean shooters. What are bean shooters you ask? Well, we served beans in small paper cups, so you can shoot them into your mouth and without using a fork. My daughter came up with the idea when we were trying to decide the menu for our party. We knew we weren’t going to offer utensils, but we wanted to offer baked beans, so she came up with bean shooters. I’m not sure they worked since everyone kept asking for silverware, but we thought it was a cute idea, and we didn’t have any leftovers.
For dessert, we passed squares of Texas sheet cake (I think Sandy used another recipe, but the recipe I linked to is close to the recipe she used). We also passed squares of apple pie bars. I found the recipe for the apple pie bars in Food and Wine and I thought it was perfect as written, so I didn’t change a thing.
We had a great time planning and throwing “A Fist Full of Cocktails,” and we have already started thinking about next year’s menu!