Dessert Table: French Fete

This month's issue of MSW features a couple's French-inspired dessert table. I love the idea of a dessert table that focuses all of the treats on a specific region or country's foods. This one showcases a croquembouche, macarons, and madeleines. Mini eclairs and tarts round out the selections.

This is a great idea if you want a dessert table that reflects your heritage or maybe a city/country that has special meaning to you and your family. A table with traditional German, Italian, or African sweets would definitely provide some unusual options that would keep your guests interested.

Mad For Madeleines

I've recently become slightly obsessed with madeleines. Traditionally, madeleine cookies have a cakey texture and a buttery flavor. However, more bakers are concocting interesting flavor combos to give the timeless treat a new twist.

These orange and brown butter madeleines on Cannelle et Vanille have a simple recipe and are lovely when dusted with powdered sugar.

Mad Mac offers madeleines in several flavors, like chocolate and pistachio.

A special mold gives the cookies their signature shell shape, no special talents required.

Martha Stewart uses madeleines to dress up a simple, frosted cake. Each guest's slice of cake would have a wonderful little cookie with it. Anytime I'm given two desserts in one, I'm a happy woman.

Lemon curd filling adds another layer of flavor to these buttery madeleines.

If you're not quite ready to tackle baking some madeleines from scratch, buy a small batch from a local bakery to sample. I've even seen them recently at Target. You can also use store-bougth madeleines and your favorite frosting to make sandwiches cookies like the ones above.

Have you seen madeleines popping up in bakeries around your town?

Reader Design: Woodsy Wedding Dessert Table

Amanda of Buttercup Cake Design contacted me a few weeks ago with a really nice email. Amanda is a Canadian baker who designs dessert tables to showcase at farmer's markets. Yesterday, she contacted me again to share images of one of her recent works and to let me know that she plains to incorporate my Halloween printables into her display this week!

Amanda designed this woodsy Autumnal dessert table for her sister's wedding.

I especially love the wild, but refined look of this cake. Since Amanda knew it would be blazing hot during the August nuptials, she created this styrofoam cake and added a real top tier for the couple to cut.  Amanda cleverly incorporated authentic natural elements into the design to add a rustic feel. Her wood stumps serve as risers and platters. You can also use real bark like I did here and here.

Amanda chronicles her journey in the dessert table design world on her blog Sweet Pursuits. She has a fabulous outlook on celebrating the ups of the business so that the downs are a little less upsetting. One of her most recent celebrations? This dessert table was published by Vancouver's Real Wedding Magazine.

Congrats Amanda, and thanks for submitting your dessert table!

So tell me, what's your favorite element of Amanda's design?