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Wedding Dessert Bar Ideas to Greet and Treat Your Guests

Rave Uno
Deciding the items and arrangement of a wedding day menu is one hassle, every bride (or wedding planner) has to face. A breaking trend is to serve a variety of small but delicious treats, arranged in a buffet-like manner. Here's a picture gallery of the various desserts that make up a wedding dessert bar.
Trends and styles occur in every occasion and a wedding is no exception. A recent and very "in" trend for weddings today, is to have a wedding dessert bar. This is a buffet-styled arrangement of various desserts and sweet items, to provide guests with a wide choice of food.
In some weddings, the traditional multi-tiered white wedding cake is foregone and instead replaced with this sort of arrangement, so newly-weds and guests alike are served the same desserts. Others keep both dessert styles, wedding cake is reserved for close family and the newly-weds, the dessert bar is exclusively for guests.
Whatever the preference, here are some ideas for a wedding dessert menu, that are ideal to serve at a bar styled food table.

Cookies

These are the least messy treats to have at your dessert bar. Find a good recipe, whip up large batches, and voila! You got lots and lots of cookies. Offer different flavors like oatmeal, chocolate chip, dark chocolate, macadamia nuts or sugar cookies.
You can use fondant icing on simple, sugar cookies for a wedding effect. For kids, who are the most difficult and least satisfied of all wedding guests, an endless supply of different cookies is an event made in heaven.

Macaroons

With fancy or sophisticated guests, try macaroons - light, baked meringue-like cookies, made of powdered nuts or coconut. Almost every European country has a macaroon variation, so the recipes are infinite and designed to suit every palate.
Macaroons are a popular and a recent addition to dessert bars and so hop onto the elegant trend, by featuring these crumbly treats among your dessert menu.

Cupcakes

A little cake in a cup for everyone. From age five to fifty, cupcakes are a guaranteed crowd pleaser. They are moist, creamy and tasty food, that allows people to mingle and stuff their faces with.
For the younger crowd, use sprinkles, jimmies and other toppings, with frosting. Red velvet, chocolate or plain vanilla with multiple frostings... whatever they are made of, cupcakes are a necessary part of a dessert arrangement.

Cheesecakes

A dessert for the snobby and simple alike. Soft, spongy and sweet cheese based flavored cake and the hard, crisp crumbly base, made from biscuit crumbs, sponge or soft pastry. Mouth watering yet? What about the variety of flavors available?
You can have chocolate, strawberry, vanilla etc., infinite flavored possibilities exist for the cheese layer. And choose from cream cheese or sour cheese or mascarpone cheese.
Then there are toppings and garnishings galore, from fresh fruit to melted, drizzled or poured over chocolate or strawberry sauce. How about a wedding styled cheesecake, with fondant or white icing and cream cheese filling? You can even have one wedding cake styled cheesecake for your ceremony and separate servings of one large cheesecake for the reception.

Brownies

There are very few desserts that are pure chocolate in flavor, texture and taste. Which is a pity as chocolate is one of the most divine dessert ingredients ever. But amongst those few items, the simple, square brownie is a treasure.
Cakey texture but small and convenient to bite. Gooey, fudgy center. Sinfully fragrant aroma. Chocolate chips sprinkled and baked with the brownie or warm chocolate sauce or icing drizzled on the chocolate square's top.
Serving brownies up as a wedding dessert is an avant-garde step, to show amongst fancy and high-brow wedding surroundings, you still have heart and it shows with this simple, homespun treat. Plus, they are very convenient to make and serve. Oh and once again, a lot of your kiddie guests will be happy.

Chocolate-covered Strawberries

This is a simple dessert to make, all you need are fresh strawberries and melted milk chocolate. Dip each strawberry's bottom half into the chocolaty syrup, leave to cool and serve.
This is a recent but very popular wedding dessert bar item and can be made even more appealing with innovative but skillful frosting. With icing, the strawberries can be decorated with little bow ties or bells or flowers or avoid the frosting and just drizzle white chocolate over them.

Petits Fours

For tiny size and variety, these French sweet marvels are perfect. Dainty small biscuits, meringues, puff pastries, little cakes, bon-bons, tiny éclairs, small tarts - in short, nothing that needs efforts to eat. These mini desserts adds the "oh-la-la" element to any dessert bar.

Donuts

Homer Simpsons "Donuts. Is there anything they can't do?" quote seems apt here. Donuts are a very odd choice in wedding desserts but there is no denying their popularity.
Fried rings of dough, filled with jam or caramel custard or with a hole in their center, and decorated with sprinkles or jimmies or frosting. For an exotic twist, you could serve beignets. Or even donut holes, which are basically mini donuts. The bottom line is you can't get more finger foody than serving donuts.

Fruit Tarts

You can have chocolate or custard tarts but fruit tarts are a very vintage and English dessert item for a wedding. Size and ingredients can be optimized. You can serve large tarts, which can be cut and served or serve tiny sized individual tarts.
The fruits used depends on your preference and you should consider seasonal availability too. Try to strike a balance, if one menu item is fruit based cheesecake, try serving tarts with a different fruit filling.

Chocolate Truffles

Little round spheres of chocolate. On the inside, they are gooey due to their creamy ganache center. On the outside, they are soft and tender and just melt in your mouth. Truffles can be filled with nuts, caramel, fruity fillings, fudge and even liqueurs.
They can be coated with chocolate or cocoa powder and have sprinkles, chocolate or vanilla shavings, powdered nuts and chocolate chips as toppings. Truffles are another type of high-end wedding dessert foods.

Hard Candies

The sweets under this heading are multi-fold in purpose. Lollipops, licorice, cola bottles, marshmallows, M&M'S ® and fruit candies are types of sweet and sugary candies.
Peppermint, cinnamon and more minty or tangy flavored candies serve as after food mints and will be highly appreciated by your very full wedding guests! Serving hard candies can be as simple as leaving them on a plate or being very decorative and wrapping them up into little bundles of assorted mints.

Dessert Shooters

Small dessert servings served in small or miniature glasses. Picture a delicious, creamy and flavorful tiramisu, served in an itty-bitty glass.
It's an ideal way to serve small portions of something sweet, instead of baking or making an entire dessert. Plus dessert shots allow yummy but messy desserts like mousse or shortcake to be served in a convenient and very appealing manner. Get even more creative and serve chocolate martinis or peanut butter and jelly pudding in shot glasses.
If you have a lot of varied items in your dessert menu, make only one type of dessert shooter. For a small menu, offer varied types of desserts in such glasses. Keep the desserts simple, something creamy or soft, preferably without crust or crumbs and full of toppings like sprinkles, frosting, fruits, M&M'S ®. ...
Now that the desserts are handled, what about the arrangement? The key here is appearance and style. You can keep small items like cupcakes and petit-fours on little tiered shelves or structures. Items like pies or cake should be laid out on plates or in dishes at table level.
Elevating items, which need to be cut and served, can end up making a huge mess. Small and simple floral decorations or an attractive centerpiece can highlight the dessert bar amongst various food tables.
In summation, to celebrate the joyous and special occasion of a wedding and the feast that follows, desserts help end the event on a lingering note of sweetness and love and a bar styled presentation of dessert items is a classy, elegant and very varied way to serve up the sweets!