In my house, Super Bowl Sunday is a holiday. The same way that some celebrate Halloween or St Patrick’s Day, it’s a night to get together with the people you love in your life and worship at the alter of football.

For almost 20 years, on a Sunday in February, my husband and I throw a Super Bowl party. What started out as six of us and a pizza in front of the TV has evolved into a 200 person football-themed wedding in our home. No, I’m not kidding. It’s ‘our thing’

Our Super Bowl party has become our ‘identifier’. As in, “you know Lauren, she throws the Super Bowl party.” And I have to admit, I love it. I start thinking about next year’s party as early as July, after all, it takes that long to plan a 200 person wedding anyway right?

Now our party was 75 people or so strong a few years ago, but the party really changed when I started baking. You can chart my baking journey with the dessert tables at the party. If you can tell how good and big a party is by the dessert table, then hands down this is what made the party the place to be because the size and scope of the dessert table was the only thing that really changed.

What prompted the big change? It took a perfect storm of dessert melt downs.

The Super Bowl Party Dessert Meltdown

First there was the sugar cookie disaster. At the grocery store in the aisle where the box cake mixes are, was a box of ‘make your own sugar cookies.’ I thought ‘how hard could this be?’ Ha! I mixed according to the box—which did NOTsay anything about chilling dough—and they spread all over the place. I was baking them the night before the party and had a full breakdown over their Dali-esque shapes. Sure it was pent up stress, but I saw these spread cookies, took my cutter and recut them as best as I could and thought to myself “I’m so much better than this.”

This same year, I had purchased three dozen cake pops from an Etsy seller. There were 15 of each team and six footballs. They were cute, shaped like helmets and they were crowd pleasers which meant they went really fast. Four days after the party the argument started… when Mike asked how much the cake pops cost.

Now for the life of me, I do not remember what they cost and no, I’m never going to look it up in my Etsy account purchases. And I didn’t complain about the cost. I thought they were perfectly within reason. But my husband didn’t understand what the cost a cute pop was and he was not happy. After being ordered to never order cake pops for the party again, I told him next year I would make my own. It meant taking cake pop class cause I had no clue how to make them.

So I took a class on sugar cookie making. I was instantly hooked on the creative process and the way a pretty cookie made people smile. After that was cake pop class. And my love for decorating desserts grew. And grew. And grew.

Super Bowl Party Football Dessert Stadium

We went from having a basic party setup—and nothing wrong with that—to a table with football stadium and field table stocked with all kinds of goodies and bleachers loaded with dessert options customized for the teams in the game. Then I started learning about cakes…

Before I started learning about cake, I used to pick one up at the grocery store. These helmet cakes were actually the second and third cakes I ever made.

My creations went from small to tiered.

Tiers turned transformed into gravity defying, and carved showstoppers.

This one is of my husband, wearing his New York Jets uniform.

And of course none of this includes the 100+ goodie boxes loaded with treats for guests to take home. I can track my baking journey with photos from the party, showcasing my growth in decorating along with new recipes I have tried and mastered.

Each year I now set up the dessert table for our party, complete with bleacher style risers covered in cookies, oreos, cupcakes, push pops, cake pops, rice Kristine treats, drizzled pretzels, dyed sugar sticks, macaroons and so much more. Every year I’m trying to up the ante for what our friends can expect of the desserts.

We had to hit pause for a year for covid, so the 2021 year we had a driveway driveby party where my friends with kids could still pick up a goodie box of sweets. I wasn’t disappointing the kids anymore than 2020 already had. We’ve since moved houses so we 2022 saw an outdoor table on a smaller scale. Yes, this is what I call small.

Every year now as I set up the table with a smorgasbord of sweets, I can hear my husband muttering under his breath “I should have never said anything about the cake pops.”

I wonder what I will make for the table next year…