With all the planning and chaos involved in putting together a party for your child, it can be easy to forget to involve your little one in the process. One of the easiest ways to get them involved is for them to help prepare some of the party food.
Food preparation is wonderful for children as not only does it help with things like hand-eye co-ordination, fine motor skills and sensory development but exposing them to new foods also gives you a greater chance of getting the food into them at the end of the day.
Mini-Quiches
Quiche is a favourite of mine. Once you have a good base you can basically add any filling to make an easy and exciting food. You can make a large one to slice or mini ones to serve as finger food at a party. For my quiche base I use this recipe from the Delicious Magazine website.
I made a double batch and then divided it in two. To one half I added the bacon and onion mixture from the original recipe. The second half I added a bag of cooked and drained baby spinach and 200g of crumbled feta cheese.
Unfortunately, during all of the baking chaos I forgot to take some of the process photos however my little ones got involved by stirring the mixture, crumbling the feta cheese and taste testing the bacon mixture!
I also made some of the mini quiches crust less (for those carb free parents) and some with the traditional pastry case.
YUM!
Marshmallow Ballerinas
I had originally wanted to make these for one of my daughter’s bakerman days at school however one of the other moms beat me to it. When my daughter and I came across the idea on Pinterest I didn’t hesitate to agree to add it to our party food list.
Ingredients:
• Large bag of pink and white marshmallows
• White chocolate (we actually found pink chocolate at a baking shop)
• Your choice of sprinkles
• Wooden or plastic skewers (cut the pointed tips off)
• Cupcake cases for the ‘skirts’
Method
• Gently melt the chocolate over a double boiler on the stove or in the microwave. White chocolate gets burnt very easily so if you are going to melt it in the microwave make sure you do it in increments of 20-30 seconds stirring in between.
• Place a marshmallow on the end of each skewer and then dip the top half of the marshmallow in the melted chocolate
• Let the excess chocolate drip off and then dip into the sprinkles
• Allow the chocolate to dry completely before sliding an upside down cupcake case onto the skewer as a ‘skirt’.
These are also great without the ‘skirts’ and you could dip them in any coloured chocolate or sprinkles for a girl, boy or neutral themed party (or baker’s day).
Ta da!