2013 Christmas Dessert Party

December is a magical month.  While it's crammed full of too many activities, there's no denying that it's one of the most fun times of the year.  Every year, my wife and I host a "little" gathering at our home to celebrate one of the true constants in this world....desserts.  It's hard to find someone that doesn't love a good dessert.  We've been lucky enough to surround ourselves with friends that share our joy in some of the sweeter parts of life ; )

This year marks the 13th Annual Robison Christmas Dessert Party.  I started this tradition with some friends, way back in my "bachelor" days.  I continued the tradition by myself for a couple of years.  However, nothing compares to having an amazing partner-in-crime to take this tradition to another level!  The idea is pretty simple - we gather the best desserts from the finest bakeries and restaurants in the area - nobody brings a thing.  We always try to hold the party during the first Saturday of December - a way to kick-off the Christmas season.  We plan for weeks ahead of the party.  Our biggest challenge?  Trying to figure out which desserts make "the cut".   Moving from Boston to Austin gave us a real challenge, as we had to quickly learn all the best places to find desserts for the party.  This year, several of the establishments that we've used for the last few years - went out of business.  This meant finding - and tasting - desserts at a bunch of new places.  This is the kind of challenge I love!

On the day of the party, I usually spend about 5 hours driving all over Austin, loading up desserts.  The car is covered with desserts by the time I'm done.  I have to be really careful about where to place them in the vehicle:

One of the new places we tried this year made a mixed-berry tart that was one of the prettiest desserts I've ever seen:

I finally arrive home, and we start to unpack all of the cakes, pies, tarts, cookies and pastries:

Our poor kids were trying to eat Macaroni and Cheese while we piled boxes around them ; )

When everything was finally assembled, we had about 5 minutes before guests started to arrive.  I quickly asked my wife to snap a few pictures before everyone started diving in...

Here are just a few of the desserts...the entire list would take a long, long time to go through ; )

Strawberry Love Cake - like a giant strawberry shortcake dessert in the form of a cake

Honey Bee Cake - honey-almond cake layered with caramel buttercream and topped with ganache

Dulche de Leche Cheesecake

Toasted S'Mores Cheesecake - complete with melted marshmallow and graham cracker topping

Lemon Rosemary Cake - lemon cake infused with rosemary, lemon curd filling and topped with cream cheese frosting

Key Lime Pie - self-explanatory

Key Lime Cheesecake

Pumpkin Bundt Cake

This next dessert was one of the more "unusual" of the evening.  We found a small restaurant that focused on pies.  This one is called the Texas Trash Pie.  In it, you'll find a combination of pecans, coconut, chocolate chips, graham crackers, pretzels and caramel.  I know - it sounds really strange.  However, when you heat all of these things together, it's amazingly good.  As you can tell from the picture, I didn't get to it before it was attacked by all of our guests ; )

As good as the desserts are, the most important things are the people that come to enjoy our desserts.  The conversation was awesome, the smiles on everyone's faces was infectious - we had a blast with everyone in our house.

We capped the evening by taking portraits in my wife's photography studio.  We took pictures of all the couples - a little reminder of the people we love.  There were several group shots, as well. I jumped into this one:

We were lucky enough to have several people there that could also take our picture.  It's important that we step out from behind the camera and show how much fun we had!

We can't wait to hold the 2014 version of this tradition.  It will probably take that long to work off all the calories...but let's not talk about that ; )