It's not a theme party without over-the-top food, right? For LazyKid's school party I took the easy way out and made a box mix with frosting-in-a-spray-can, added a cupcake pick and some red or green sugar sprinkles, and voila! Cuteness!
I had a few picks left over after the school party, and those came in handy for dressing up some of the food I prepared for the grownups in attendance at the actual party at our house.
The kids' food, on the other hand, needed no dressing-up at all, since it was all part of the table decoration:
In case you're wondering, that's pepperoni slices (red birds), colby cheese triangles (yellow birds), string cheese cut into rounds (egg birds), melba toast slices (blocks), two sizes of pretzel rods (blocks), corn chips and Doritos (more yellow birds), green grapes (pigs), and blueberries (blue birds). The toy in the center is from a Happy Meal that LazyGrandma picked up on her way out to visit us this week, and it plays the most annoying music I have heard in a long time. Needless to say, the kids loved it.
Since I hadn't planned on doing a really decorated cake, I made some sugar cookies that were easy to make look (sorta) like red birds, golden eggs, and pigs.
These were actually easy to make, if somewhat time-consuming. I made the sugar cookie dough earlier in the week, dying half of it light green. The day before the party we went into cookie production mode, baking and decorating all of them over the course of the day. The eggs were easiest - roll an oval of dough in your hands, then smash it flat on the cookie sheet using the bottom of a glass that's been dipped in sugar. When they were baked and cool, I spread premade cookie icing on them, then LazyKid flipped them upside down and dipped them in gold sparkly sugar.
The pigs used a similar method - one large ball of dough with two smaller balls stuck to it on the cookie sheet, flattened with the bottom of a glass dipped in a LOT of sugar (lest the ears stick and get ripped off). When baked and cooled, we decorated them with premade black decorator frosting and stuck on some candy eyes. We initially tried to use green frosting to make them darker (the ones in the back), but the lighter ones looked better.
The birds took the most effort, but were still easy. Those were balls that I didn't flatten on the sheet, just baked so they would be rounded when they came out. Cooled, then frosted with red cookie icing, which I also used to stick on the candy eyes. Unfortunately, the slope of the cookies made them drip a little, so I tried to stick the eyes on so that the drips looked like the feathers atop the bird's head. After that was dry, I used black decorator frosting to pipe on the eyebrows, and a little yellow frosting for the beak.
After making a couple of dozen of the cookies, I was ready to tackle the cake. I had extra batter left when I made the cupcakes, which I went ahead and baked in an 8" cake pan and some mini muffin tins, then froze until the day before the party. Thawed out the cake and cupcakes , flipped the cake over so I'd have crisp edges to work with, nestled the cupcakes in to look like tail feathers, and went to town with the frosting and a star tip.
The only trick here was that I only had white cookie icing, not frosting, so after I got the body and eyebrows done, I used a moist finger to smooth the red frosting down under the eye area, then flooded it with cookie icing. Added the beak, and the black details with a smaller tip, and it was done! The best part of it was, the cake was so small that it was just big enough for each person at the party to have a piece, with no leftovers to store. Score!
The final bit of food I made special was in the goodie bags the kids took home after the party. I made little nests with melted peanut butter chips and chow mein noodles, then added some Whopper eggs and blue Peeps leftover from Easter. Put in a nice red party bag, it looked pretty decent, even if none of the kids probably ate them!
The kids also took home some of the cookies, but I didn't bother getting a picture of that.
That's about it as far as food goes ... stay tuned for more info on the actual party!
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