Mother's Day Brunch

Mother's Day turned into a pretty good success!  We've had a brunch for our Mom's and my Aunts & Uncle for the last few years, and I always like to try new recipes for the day.  This year it took me awhile to pull together my "menu", but it turned out to be a great one!  Not to mention, A LOT was made in advance, which made for a super easy morning...

I always love to start with a fruit salad type appetizer, and this year I tried Giada's recipe for Fruit Salad with Cannoli Cream.  Fruit salad with whipped cream = awesome, Fruit salad with whipped cream AND Ricotta = awesome x's 10;)  Everyone really enjoyed this...even though I think they liked the toasted almonds even more than the cannoli cream;) hahahahhahaa....

I made the fruit salad, cannoli cream, toasted almonds & "prepped" the mint all Saturday night...so Sunday morning, all I had to do was make up the glasses and stick them in the fridge till everyone arrived...easy peasy!

And here was the king of "early prep," as I had to start this dough about 24 hours before we actually ate these babies:)  Last week we watched a BF Throwdown for sticky buns, so we were pretty psyched to try out the winning recipe since it was online!  Now grant it, these are only SPECIAL OCCASION treats, but man oh man...were they SLAMMIN!! :)

Butter (butter & MORE butter), brown sugar, cinnamon and honey...yowza!  Sorry the picture of the final "flipped" 'buns is a little blurry...as I was pretty anxious to finally try them out after all those steps & hours of waiting:) hahahahahhaahahha.....

(ps-these actually took about DOUBLE the time for the second proof, than the 2 hours noted in the recipe.  It took a good four hours for these to double in size...MUCH to my EXTREME delight!! :)

I somehow forgot to take a picture of the ONE non-carb item of the meal!!  Scott made a delicious grilled ham that everyone really enjoyed:)  And as our OTHER non-sugar side dish, I went with an old favorite: Fancy Potato Pancake.  This is GREAT for entertaining, because you start cooking it on the stove top, but finish it off in the oven...so it's an EASY "before everyone gets there" prep...

Plus, it's REALLY pretty (well, for potatoes:).  I topped this one with some sauteed onions & peppers for a little extra kick...

Andddd back to sugar:)  For dessert, I sorta stuck with the "breakfast" theme and made good 'ole rice krispie treats!  However, these were ALSO kicked up quite a few notches...as they were made with browned butter & sea salt.  You know I love me some sweet & salty;)

Phewww.....that was a lot of sugar for one post:)  I am VERY MUCH ready to eat nothing but vegetables and NO DESSERTS for a week!  (well, at least till Wednesday;)  But everything went really well, and everyone seemed to enjoy the sugar meal.  Much love to all the Mom's out there, especially mine!!

Have a good Monday:)