How to Plan a Dessert Table

A dessert table has two jobs and they pull against each other. It has to look abundant when people first see it, and it has to still look acceptable ninety minutes later once forty people have been at it.

Most tables fail at the second. Here is how to plan one that does not.

Quantities

The number people usually reach for is one item per head, and it is too low for a table that is meant to look full and too high if there is also a cake.

The working figures we would use:

For a table alongside a full meal, allow two small pieces per person. People have eaten.

For a table that is the dessert course, allow three to four small pieces per person, or one slice of cake plus two small things.

For an all evening table at a drinks party with no meal, allow four to five pieces per person across the evening, and plan to replenish rather than putting everything out at once.

The adjustment that matters is that variety changes consumption. Put out one thing and people take one. Put out five things and the same people take three, because each new thing resets the decision. This is worth knowing in both directions, because it means a varied table costs more per head than you budgeted.

Variety, and how much is too much

Five to seven different items is the sweet spot for a table of thirty to fifty people.

Below four it looks like a buffet that ran short. Above eight it starts looking like a jumble sale, people cannot take one of everything, and half of it goes untouched, which looks worse at the end than a smaller table would have.

Balance across four axes rather than choosing what you like:

Something to cut, so there is a centrepiece. One cake, not three.

Something small and sweet, several kinds. Kurabye at £15, goose feet at £25, kartoshka at £24, Florentines at £23.

Something with fruit or sharpness, to break up the sugar. Lemon tartlets at £30 for six are the best thing we make for this.

Something savoury, which almost nobody does and which transforms a table. Pirozhki at £22 to £27 for six. On a table of sweet things, they disappear first.

Height, and why flat tables look mean

This is the thing that separates a table that looks generous from one that looks sparse, and it has nothing to do with quantity.

A table where everything sits at the same level reads as flat and thin, even when there is plenty on it. Introducing two or three levels makes the same food look like considerably more.

Cake stands are the obvious way. A pile of choux buns is a better one, because it has volume and irregularity and a neat arrangement never looks as abundant as a slightly untidy heap. Twelve choux at £30 will do more for how a table looks than anything else at that price.

Boxes under a cloth work perfectly well and nobody can tell.

What survives two hours and what does not

This is the part people get wrong, and the damage is done by ninety minutes in.

Fine for a long table: cookies, Florentines, truffles, kurabye, goose feet, peanut rings, kartoshka, oreshki, pirozhki. All of these look the same at the end as at the beginning.

Fine for about two hours: the Prague, the carrot cake, the Napoleon, the Kyiv, the Esterházy. Firm cakes with stable fillings that hold a cut edge.

Not fine: the pavlova, the strawberry cream cake, the trubochki, the vatrushki, anything with whipped cream. In a warm room these are past their best within an hour, and by two they look sad in a way that drags the whole table down.

If you want the pavlova, serve it as a separate moment rather than putting it on the table. Bring it out, serve it, and take it away.

Timing

Do not put everything out at the start. Hold back a third and bring it out an hour in. The table gets a second life, and the second half looks fresh at exactly the moment the first half is looking picked over.

Take away what is failing. The plate with three broken pieces on it is doing active harm. Consolidate onto a smaller plate or remove it.

Cut the cake before it goes out, if it is a standing event. Nobody wants to be the first person to cut into a whole cake at a party, and a pre cut cake is eaten and a whole one is admired.

An example

Fifty people, a drinks party, dessert table out all evening.

One medovik at £68, cut into twenty small pieces. Twelve choux at £30, piled for height. Six lemon tartlets at £30. 300 g of goose feet at £25. 200 g of kurabye at £15. Florentines at £23. Twelve pirozhki across two fillings at about £49.

That is around £240 for fifty people, it covers sweet, sharp, savoury and small, it has height, and about two thirds of it will still look presentable at eleven o'clock.

What to put it on

Less of a detail than it sounds.

Serving plates in different sizes look better than a matched set, because a matched set reads as catering and a mixture reads as a house. Nobody consciously notices this and everybody responds to it.

Leave gaps. A table packed edge to edge has nowhere for the eye to rest and, more practically, nowhere for a guest to put down a glass while they take something. The gaps also give you somewhere to move things as the evening thins the table out.

Put the savoury at one end rather than mixing it through. People approach a table looking for one kind of thing, and a plate of pirozhki between two plates of biscuits gets missed by half the room.

Serving tongs for anything small, and a spare plate underneath. Fingers over a shared plate at a party is the thing that stops people going back.

Kartoshka Dessert - 6 Pieces£28Peanut Rings (12 pieces)£36

Ordering

Everything needs 48 hours notice, and for a table of this size we would suggest ordering a week ahead so there is room to change your mind.

Delivery is £12 within SW3 and £15 across the rest of London and Surrey, with a £50 minimum which a dessert table clears easily.

Deliver the day before, not the morning of. Everything on the list above except the choux and the tartlets is fine or better after a night in a fridge, and the last thing you want on the day of an event is to be watching for a van.