Dessert buffet idea

[Kakkilakki]

I have been asked to contribute to a dessert buffet. There will be around 35 people attending. There will be about 6 desserts to choose from.

I need something incredibly easy and no fuss. I am a terrible baker so no cake. I will have the afternoon before the event to prepare my dish.

I thought of eton mess. But I wouldn’t have enough glasses to do individual ones. Plus someone is making a berry cream thing so it might be a bit samey. Has anyone got any other ideas?

The only thing I am good at is baking cookies. But this needs to be a proper dessert, not just a box of cookies.

A non baked cheesecake is probably your friend here. There are loads of good recipes on line.
Failing that, a quick trip to the supermarket and buy something!

I was going to say cheesecake. But a Bakewell tart is easy to make and to cut up. Buy the pastry.
Or you could make a trifle (easy).
Or does cheese and biscuits count as dessert?

A massive piled-high plate of Tunnocks Tea Cakes? I'm not being facetious; I attended a wedding last year and that was on the dessert table - it was the first choice to be set upon.

Sorry forgot to say, someone else is making a cheesecake. There was something lemony too, and tiramisu. Can’t remember the rest!!

I‘m not in the UK so can’t get all the ingredients for trifle, not sure how it would be received either. Which is a shame because I love trifle!

Unfortunately cheese and biccies is out, needs to be sweet

Could you just provide a fruit salad? Mixed summer berries or maybe fresh pineapple/mango/passion fruit?

Banoffee? Shortcrust pastry or crushed biscuit crumb base, caramel made from either boiled condensed milk or straight out of a jar of dulce de leche, bananas, whipped cream?

Lemon curd tart then. If you can’t buy lemon curd where you are, it’s really easy to make. I made it for the first time a while ago and was surprised at how easy it is.

Chocolate mousse?
Tarte Tatin?

both easy.

Pavlova?

have a look at the Good Food ap. loads of ideas for easy summery desserts.

Fruit salad and the secret trick is a splash of red or white port!

So many great ideas! Thanks. I‘ll have a look for some recipes and see which one I think I can manage 😅

If you can bake cookies, do you think you’d be able to manage brownies or blondies?

Chocolate mousse. I always make the Mary Berry one but I think there is a BBC Food cheat's version which doesn't use raw egg.

Easy Triple Chocolate Brownie Recipe | Jane's Patisserie
Or a massive pile of these which are absolutely delicious. I swap the milk chocolate chunks for Rolos but make sure they are very cold before adding to the mixture.

A fresh fruit salad is a nice alternative to creamy desserts.
A very simple raspberry jelly with fresh raspberries or (suprisingly popular at my house parties) is a couple of tins of mandarin oranges in orange jelly, I make the jelly up with the juice from the tinned oranges, very light and refreshing, and low in calories.

Pots au chocolat. Easier than mousse. Buy paper cups.

Brownies? I’m not baker but they are hard to cock up

Rainbow jam tarts - really easy, cheap, but eternally popular! Really good to make ahead and keep brilliantly unlike some creamy or fruity things.

https://www.jamieoliver.com/recipes/fruit/rainbow-jam-tarts/

With the things you’ve mentioned others are already bringing, I’d absolutely do fruit salad but make it fancy with some more exotic fruits. That’s a lot of heavy desserts and not much that’s light and fruity.

Will there be children there? Or is it a whimsical enough occasion with adults? If so, dirt cups. Buy the plastic cups if necessary. They’re fun.

https://www.julieseatsandtreats.com/dirt-cups/

The above is an American recipe, though you can find variations online with different ingredients. You can just use whipped cream instead of ‘cool whip’ or various store bought chocolate custards for the ‘chocolate pudding’ and I often use chocolate cake instead of the Oreos (or brownies, can be store bought both of them).

Buy a large meringue base from Cotswold Meringue Company. Whip up double cream and add loads of strawberries and chopped kiwi, with raspberries.
Buy a large pastry base. Lay sliced bananas over the base. Add caramel condensed cream, then whipped cream and white chocolate shavings. Easy Banoffee.
Buy all the ingredients for a great trifle - plenty on BBC good food.
i reckon I could whip up all 3 in an hour! Cheats desserts x

The easiest one I can think of is no bake biscuit and chocolate cake. You almost can't mess it up, or even really call it a recipe. But here's one for you anyway:
https://richanddelish.com/chocolate-biscuit-cake/

So, we've already got:

Berries and cream thing
Cheesecake
A lemony thing
Tiramasu.

35 people divided by six desserts, so I think you'd need to do something that served about eight.

There's already a lot of creamy and quite squishy textures and of the obvious, popular flavours that are missing there's chocolate, something fruity that isn't berries or lemon and without getting too avant garde, not much else.

Apart from fruit salad which is a really good choice but has already been mentioned here's my best idea.

Mango and passionfruit curd tart with a biscuit base. You make the mango curd the same as you do lemon curd and you only need 1 big or two medium ish mangos, (mangoes?) so not as expensive as you might think - or maybe even tinned mango.

You could do a usual digestive biscuit base or use coconut biscuits or a bit of dessicated coconut to make it fancier.

I've tasted it with biscoff biscuits or ginger in the base too but that was a bit too punchy for me but opinions will vary. I was nearly won over by the ginger one but not quite.

This is the general idea but has a pastry base, which isn't as nice and too much nonsense to get into - unless you want to, or you could buy one - but this gives you the general idea:

https://www.bbcgoodfood.com/recipes/mango-passion-fruit-curd-sunshine-tart

Biscuit base recipe

225g biscuits
100g butter.

Either no bake and just chill or put it in the oven at 180 for 10 mins.

I thought of Key Lime Pie as well but we're getting too close to lemons and cheesecake.

I thought you could get away with the biscuit base if the filling wasn't creamy.

Anyway, it's easy enough and here's Mary Berry's version which is the simplest I've seen:

https://maryberryrecipe.co.uk/mary-berry-key-lime-pie-recipe/

There's several traybake threads on Mumsnet too - for things like Fifteens and Tiffin but they might be too teatime-ish for a dessert.

Fruit kebabs with a fruit coulis and/ or chocolate dipping sauce?

Chocolate chip cookies. Find a good recipe online and don't make them too chewy or at risk of sticking together. Cookies keep well and feel hygienic for buffets. People don't need a plate or cutlery to eat it.

Personally find all dairy based desserts like tiramisu, cheesecake or cakes with cream filled layers a bit ick for dessert buffets. You have no idea how long the filling has been whipped up or been standing around someone's fridge. Or which kids or pets have had their fingers/noses in the bowl. There is also something icky about amateur cakes (obviously not talking about OP here) that have fancy layers and loads of cream or fruit in between. You can tell the person who baked it is trying too hard and all the ingredients just feel overly "touched", soggy and not particularly sanitary.

The creamy stuff is also what usually gets left over at buffets. Things that are single portioned, easy to handle and look clearly baked through or packaged (eg tunnocks teacakes) go the fastest.

For a quick dessert, I always buy a pre-baked, sweet pastry case. In the UK, they are generally with the baking things, but I've also seen them in the freezer section. They also do smaller tart cases for individual desserts, but it depends what you can find in the country you are in. These recipes all use the pre-made case:

Salted caramel tart (no bake). Tin of caramel/dulce de leche (nestles do one). Mix it a bit then pour into the pastry case, smooth with a knife. Sprinkle a small amount of salt on top. Melt milk chocolate and smooth a very thin layer over the top. Put in fridge to cool. If the chocolate is too thick, its sticky to cut.

Passionfruit tart- mix 1 tin of condensed with either fruit of 3 passionfruits or a small tin of passionfruit. Mix in lime juice of 2 limes. Pour the mixture into the pastry case and oven bake at 160'c until the edges start to go slightly brown but the middle is still a bit jiggly. It can burn quickly, so keep an eye on it. Cool.

Chocolate Tart (no bake) https://www.jamieoliver.com/recipes/chocolate/simple-chocolate-tart/ I serve this with fresh berries