Birthday Brunch

Jen is hosting a Tasty Tuesday blog party, and I know how much my peeps like to eat! Go over to see what everyone else is cooking up. After you visit here, that is!

HJ turns 2 on Easter Sunday. Here's what she looked like last year in all her cake and glory.

So we got together for a brunch on Saturday to celebrate. Here's what we ate listed on one of my latest projects.

I tried a couple of new recipes for the brunch. I know, a no-no! I felt confident though with my latest issue of Southern Living in hand. One new item was the punch, Sparkling Grape Juice Lemonade, complete with frozen grapes to keep it cool in the punch bowl. The other item was a small appetizer. I called it a Honey Nut Cheese Spread, but it's really called Sweet-'n'-Salty Honey Cheese Spread. Yum. Yum. Yum. You had me at goat cheese, Southern Living!

Ya'll know you can't go wrong with some Paula Deen, so our two big casseroles were the Southern favorite Baked Garlic Cheese Grits and one of my new favorites the Praline French Toast Casserole. This time I used Laughing Cow Garlic and Herb cheese wedges in the grits. I usually use Alouette, but in this economy... (let's see how many posts in a row we'll use that phrase! anyone sick of it yet?)

We almost had a mishap of gigantic proportions when I came quite close to omitting a stick of butter from the grits recipe. NOT ON PURPOSE, YA'LL! Purely a close call. I almost started to sweat. Almost. Paula's white teeth flashed before my eyes and she just shook her head at me! Close. Call.

We also had on hand pastel Mn M's, Cheerios, Robin's Egg Chocolates and Annie's Cheddar Bunnies.

A full view of the spread

The cake that was supposed to look like this, turned out like this:

My bunny cookie cutter ended up being TOO BIG, so one went on top and we called it done! Papa made some homemade strawberry ice cream that was too die for to go on the side.

The cake was a perfect ending to celebrating our sweet one's birthday. She's not a baby anymore...