Birthday Party Food Tips

Birthday Food for Toddlers

When you are planning a menu for the toddler age group, making the food exciting can be a bit of a challenge. After all, while adults enjoy different textures and tastes, toddlers think change is just gross. Give them bland, familiar foods and they are delighted. For birthday food for toddlers, you should:

• Turn the ordinary into something interesting with a set of cookie cutters. Peanut butter and jelly sandwiches are a lot more fun if they are cut into shapes that match the party theme. T Rex or Stegosaurus sandwiches are definitely going to put the little guys in a party mood.
• Chicken nuggets in different shapes are also a hit with the toddler set. Dinosaur, crown and drumstick shapes are readily available at most grocery stores. While most of them like to eat their nuggets plain, some do like to dunk them. Offer caramel, honey, ranch dressing and barbeque sauce, but be sure the dips are on the side.
• Snack mixes can also be popular. You can buy premade mixes, like Cheerio snack mix, or you can make your own with a variety of children's cereals and snacks. Most toddlers like a mix of cheese curls, goldfish and dry cereal.

Birthday Party Desserts

At birthdays, everybody expects to see the birthday cake at the end of the meal. But if you want to make a change or serve other desserts in lieu of a birthday cake, there are many more birthday party desserts you can try. Here is our list of birthday party desserts, besides the standard cake:

Cupcakes – Cupcakes can be a wonderful substitute for the tried and true traditional birthday cake. Stack several of them in tiers or decorate individual cupcakes with letters or a birthday theme.

Peanut Butter Wontons – These aren’t your traditional wontons. Filled with peanut butter and deep-fried, peanut butter wontons are marvelous with a chocolate sauce.

Cake Ice Cream Cones - Bake cake mix in a muffin tin. Serve the cake, covered with frosting and sprinkles, in ice cream cones.

Snowball ice cream - Desserts are twice as fun when the guests get to make it themselves. Throw ice cream ingredients into a snowball ice cream maker, let the guests toss it around, and you’ll have a dessert ready in 20 minutes.

Birthday Party Food Fit for a Princess

A princess party has to be elegant, from the way the room is decorated to the birthday party food being served. Ideas for food fit for a princess are usually pretty similar to the menu at most tea shops.

Delicate sandwiches are very simple to make. Simply cut the crust off a loaf of bread, make your sandwiches as you normally would and then cut them into little triangles or squares. Little girls love being able to pick up food with cocktail picks instead of fingers when they are in princess mode, so be sure to stick picks in some of the sandwiches.

Tea in delicate cups is another essential part of a princess party. Plenty of milk and sugar is the key to happy tea drinkers at this age. Make sure you have twice as much as you think you'll need on hand. Thirty little girls can drink a gallon of milk and use up a two pound bag of sugar over several hours as they go back for tea refills.

A mini cake for each girl, delicately frosted with flowers is a nice change from the traditional birthday cake. An assortment of traditional tea sweets is also a good idea.

Of course, despite the fun of eating and drinking like grown up ladies, the girls still love their favorites. You may want to try serving mini bagel pizzas, chicken nuggets and other finger foods at another table, too.

Simple Birthday Party Food For Kid’s Parties

For kid’s parties, the key is to keep food choices uncomplicated. Simple birthday party food is best at a party for children. Save your gourmet presentations for the adults. In case you’re trying to come up with some menu ideas, we’ve put together some suggestions for simple birthday party food you can serve at kid’s parties:

• Put together a snack mix with graham cereal, almonds, and pecans mixed in with melted butter, brown sugar, and corn syrup.
• Make easy finger sandwiches with a cheese spread and cut into 4 triangles.
• Put out a bowl of macaroni and cheese.
• Make a pot of fun-shaped pasta, like bow ties or seashells. Serve tomato sauce on the side.
• Serve slices of pizza, cut into small squares.

Birthday Party Drinks to Compliment the Meal

No birthday party can go without liquid nourishment to compliment the meal. Birthday party drinks don’t make the event, but they certainly can make the celebration more fun. Here are some birthday party drinks to try:

Make a roasted pear Bellini. To make this drink, you’ll need one part roasted pear puree, one part pear nectar, and then top it off with champagne –all in a glass flute.

Make a tropical punch everyone can enjoy. Mix ginger ale with pineapple juice and orange juice. The whole party will be instantly refreshed.

For the cocktail birthday party, try an apple martini. You’ll need vodka, apple schnapps, and sweet and sour mix. Shake the concoction and pour into a martini glass.

Picnic Birthday Party Foods

Picnics are laid-back way to get friends and family together for a birthday outing. If you’re planning an outdoor event, check out our list of suggestions for picnic birthday party foods to keep the guests well fed and smiling.

• Pack some fried chicken dipped in buttermilk and seasoned with sea salt and ground pepper.
• Make some chilled pasta salad and toss in smoked salmon, cucumbers, and salmon roe.
• It’s quick and easy. Boil lobsters in salt. Have melted butter and lemons on hand to add to the flavor.
• Pack some whole wheat sandwich bread that’s been baked with oats and pecans with the rest of your picnic birthday party foods.
• To satisfy the sweet tooth, make a fresh ginger fruit salad with chopped Asian pears, pineapples, and mangoes. Minced ginger, lime and orange juice will add some zest to the flavor.

Birthday Party Foods You Can Nibble On

For a grown-up birthday party affair that doesn’t involve a sit down dinner, try hosting a cocktail party. You can serve mixed drinks and hors d’oeuvres and your guests can get together and mingle. Here are some tasty birthday party foods for your party to dine on:

• Boil some asparagus and prepare it with a wasabi and mayonnaise dip.
• Slice petite pieces of a mushroom pizza, sprinkled with Gorgonzola cheese and basted with olive oil.
• Broil shrimp, serve on skewers, and serve with a spiced pistachio chutney dip.
• Serve an assortment of raw vegetables, like cherry tomatoes, cucumber spears, and celery sticks with a spicy yogurt dip.
• For a divine dessert to go with your birthday party foods, serve strawberry cream puffs, covered in a chocolate glaze.
  

Kids Birthday Food Ideas for a Transformer Party

Transformers are back in style. You've agreed to throw a Transformer party for your child and then he or she drops the bomb. You can come up with some kids’ birthday food ideas that stick to the Transformer theme, right? Well, food doesn't usually change from a delicious morsel to a car and back again, no matter how excited the kids would be. However, you can make some related party treats.

• Let the kids build a car or truck from food. Use grapes, banana rounds, bread squares and other foods as construction material. This works best if you make your own basic car sample before they arrive so they can get an idea of what to do.
• Find robot and car shaped cookie cutters that are about the same size. Bake two sets of cookies and then use icing to glue them together as a robot car sandwich. They don't literally transform, but the kids can flip them back and forth and pretend they are changing from cars to robots.

Birthday Food Idea for a Superhero Party

Your child is really into one of the big super heroes and you've decided to throw a superhero birthday party. However, you just can't come up with a good birthday food idea for the party. What do superheroes eat?

Wonder Woman is so well known for her golden lariat. Although it is red instead of gold, shoestring licorice makes a nice substitute for that fancy weapon of hers. Rock candy becomes a dangerous weapon for criminals to use against Superman when it is labeled as Kryptonite.

For Spiderman fans, try making your own spiders. Peanut butter, round crackers and pretzel sticks make these creepy critters. Make a peanut butter cracker sandwich and push four pretzel sticks into each side to form the eight legs. Use a dab of peanut butter as glue to put cereal eyes on the spiders. (Any rounded cereal shape will work for this.)

If you have bat and spider shaped cookie cutters left over from Halloween, you can make several fun food ideas.

• Bake a thin sheet cake or brownie tray and cut out bats and spiders.
• Trace around the cookie cutters on a piece of clean cardboard and use the cardboard templates and a knife to cut the shapes out of a pizza crust shell. Then let the kids create their own mini superhero pizzas.
• Of course, you can also make cookies in spider and bat shapes, too.