A lot depends on what kind of staging you can do: is it ‘bring a completed dessert that doesn’t need to be refrigerated’? or is it ‘come as early as you want to use the kitchen and serving dishes’?
For instance, would you be able to fill small bowls/wine glasses with chocolate mousse (+ whipped cream) and refrigerate them ahead of time?
Twenty servings really isn’t that big a deal – you don’t really need to go to mass-production methods, just multiply a four-person recipe by five (or a six-person recipe by four).
6-8 C any type bread, cut in 2” pieces
2 C sugar
1 C raisins
1 C chopped pecans or walnuts
1 tbs cinnamon
1 tbs nutmeg
4 C milk
½ C butter (one stick) melted
3 eggs
2 tbs vanilla
Preheat oven to 350°.
Combine all dry ingredients. Add all other ingredients. Mixture will be very wet. Pour into greased 13x9 baking pan. Bake for 1 to 1-1/4 hours until top is golden brown. Serve warm with sauce.
Grandma’s Sauce
½ C butter
1-1/2 C powdered sugar
½ c apple juice
2 egg yolks
Stir together butter and sugar over medium heat until mixed well. Remove from heat and add juice. Stir well, then whisk in eggs quickly. Sauce will thicken as it cools. Serve warm over warm bread pudding.
Make chocolate brownies ahead of time using your best/favorite recipe, a double portion if need be.
Serve with a scoop of expensive vanilla ice cream, fresh raspberries, drizzled with chocolate syrup, garnish with a sprig of mint on top.
Since it’s so simple to put together, nothing to stress over, you can take time getting the presentation just right, the scoops of ice cream nice and round, the drizzle tres artistic, the mint leaves prettily placed, that’s a very big part of impressing everyone.
Can easily serve 20, easy to make in advance (brownies), easy to plate and serve, looks very impressive, and will definitely please everyone.
I know it’s simple, but I’m telling you, people are always wowed with it whenever I serve it.
If a trifle is too much bother or doesn’t scale enough, you could go with its less arranged cousin the Eton Mess. Basically it’s a berry (usually strawberries), sherry cream and meringues all jumbled together in a bowl… a mess. I have anti-meringue people in my family so I made one last summer with macaroons, blackberries and amaretto whipped cream. The macaroons I used were not the usual dense chewy ones, but a crispy light version that went well with the cream and berries. It looks and more importantly tastes much better than it sounds.
A super-easy, but tasty dessert that never fails to impress (because it’s SO rich and flavorful) is caramel pie.
This uses sweetened, condensed milk. You’ll use about 1.5-2 cans per pie, so scale up as much as you need. The labor is not significantly greater for more pies.
Boil unopened cans of sweetened, condensed milk (remove the labels) in a pot of water for 2.5 to 3 hours. Keep them completely covered, and mind the water level. You do not want them heated directly on the bottom of the pot.
Cool in the refrigerator overnight.
Scoop into your choice of pie crust (graham cracker is wonderful) and let settle.
Top with meringue, whipped heavy cream, chocolate shavings, nuts, or whatever flavors you want. I’ve done a pear and brown sugar reduction that was orgasmically good.
The fun of this recipe is in the caramelization of the milk. It works like a charm every single time. Open the boiled and cooled cans, and lo and behold, you have cans of wonderful, thick, tasty milk caramel. It’s like magic.
May I suggest James Barber’s Avocado Mousse? This is God’s way of saying she’s sorry for the invention of instant coffee - serves 4.
Avocado Mousse
2 ripe avocados
juice of lime
2 Tbsp sugar or honey
2 tsp instant coffee
1/2 cup whipped cream
Mix all the ingredients in the food processor until smooth. Put into serving bowls.
How much are you looking to spend? I recently went to a buffet restaurant, and the best thing on the desert table was a simple fondue fountain with melted chocolate, some sliced bananas and marshmallows. A fondue warmer would be around $20 or less, the ingredients would be maybe another $20 if you went with various in-season fruits.
Too bad the cheesecake+berry sauce was used already, that’s my go-to desert.
Slice bananas lengthwise. Saute in butter a bit, then add brown sugar and cinnamon (and other congenial spices if wanted, like cloves). Add some vanilla and remove from heat (don’t boil vanilla because it’s wasteful, always add at the last minute since the flavor compounds are so volatile). Serve hot over vanilla ice cream. You can have bowls already pre-scooped and chilling in the freezer, waiting for the hot caramel-banana sauce.
The official way includes adding rum and flambeing it as described above, but we always skip that step as too scary in my household. But if you’re brave enough, it would add a ton of drama to the presentation.
In a large casserole pan, make a crushed Oreo cookie crust base. Pour in softened peppermint ice cream. Refreeze. Top with the homemade fudge recipe of your choice. Refreeze. Easily serves 20.
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