Wedding Ideas

Serve ‘Em Up With a Cookie Bar

Posted on September 06, 2012 by New Jersey Bride

New JErsey Bride Carly Doug's Cookie Bar
Off Beet Productions; Carly and Doug’s Wedding

Wedding receptions typically end with a scrumptious dessert buffet, if not a whole room filled with jaw-dropping dessert stations from the Belgian waffle bar with homemade gelato, chocolate mousses, zeppoles, chocolate martini shots, mini napoleons and cake pops. But if the dancing will go on for a few more hours, satisfy your guests with a surprise additional late-night sweets offering: a cookie bar.

Imagine a fresh, new dessert bar or station set up with multi-tiers of cookie trays and bowls filled with mini cookies, and more. Guests take their picks and perhaps even dunk them into creamy Kahlua dessert drinks. If your reception site dessert chef is able, serve up warm, fresh-baked chocolate chip cookies for a comfort-food crowd-pleaser.

A Wedding at Jasna Polana - New Jersey Bride

 Here are some tips for your cookie bar:

•    Mix it up. Provide at least five different types of cookies, from dark chocolate chunk to shortbread to citrus-flavored iced cookies and more.

•    If there are specialty cookies from your cultures, include those in your collection as a nod to your heritages.

•    Guests love chocolate-dipped cookies, so provide some chocolate dipped Oreos, half-dipped madeleines, white chocolate-dipped sugar cookies and colorful iced cookies.

New Jersey Bride Jessica and Will Real Wedding

•    Choose theme-shaped cookies. Perhaps in place of a groom’s cake, you’ll serve football and football helmet-shaped cookies, or for a bridal shower serve butterfly, flower or stiletto-shaped cookies to add your personality into the mix.

•    Display cookies like restaurants do, lining them up, overlapping, to create a more professional arrangement. Or, to make your cookie buffet look even grander, like you have a huge amount, set out cookies in single layers.

•    Set out identification tags for each of your cookies, so that guests know what’s what, and also so that guests with allergies can avoid the almond-paste pignoli cookies.

Versailles Ballroom Cookies

•    Provide tongs that open wide enough to grab thicker cookies, for more orderly cookie selection.

•    Give guests little bowls to put their cookies in, since flat plates could cause a cookie or pile of cookies to slide right off onto the floor.

•    Double up your cookie bar to serve as your take-home favors buffet. Set out favor baggies with twist-ties so that guests can take a few cookies for the ride home.