Inspiration please: cake & picnic food for DD's 'baby welcoming'

[SarahCaroline]

We're planning a big family picnic in one of the big London parks in August as a substitute christening for DD, and I'm looking for inspiration: any thoughts on lovely shareable picnic food, plus ideas for a not-a-christening cake? Links to useful websites / book recommendations also appreciated.
I think I may have to make the cake myself as the whole thing will have to be called off if it rains, so I can hardly spend a fortune on a professional cake! Have no experience of decorating etc though - any cheat's techniques to get DD's name on the cake? Quite fancied the mountain-of-cupcakes idea but guess that might be more troublesome than it seems.
Help!

go to your local libary for the books
you got your pasta salad
ingrediants
cooked pasta
cuecumber
desseded tomatoe chopped rough
and spring onion also chopped
ok theres the basic ingrediants mix with chicken or cheese or tuna or on its own its also nice with salad cream
then your basic sandwich veggie meat and fish
tuna and sweetcorn
rice salad
thats all i can think of hth

How about doing canapes and getting everyone to bring some - much less mess and don't have to worry about all the palaver of plates, knives forks etc.

Much more elegant too!

eg

Foot long cheese straws
Mini yorkshire puds with roast beef and horseradish
Smoked salmon on rye bread with watercress
Slices of cucumber with crab pate on them
Satay sticks with peanutty dip
Cherry tomatoes stuffed with cream cheese and paprika
Little melba toasts topped with all sorts of things

Oh you know the sort of thing

Would fit in well with the cup cake idea too!

ps why not get a plain white cake from M&S or somewhere and pay to get it decorated. Much cheaper. I think you can buy pre-made icing letters from some places, as well as other things to go on cakes

eg this one has some things to go on christening cakes

love the mountain of cupcakes - we did one for my mothers 50th. YOu can get icing letters from most supermarkets. or you can spell out her name in silver balls, one letter per cake and put thse at the front of the pile. (Far easier to apply silver balls using tweezers than fingers btw)

Ripe strawberries dipped in bitter chocolate and allowed to cool. Yummy! Raw veg with lots of humous/taramasalata etc. Cold cooked pizza slices.

Mmm, thanks for the lovely ideas.
Prufrock, do you have a cupcake recipe? Did you do a solid mountain, or build it around something?
Thanks again!

For my dd's Blessing in October we're having Afternoon Tea....the menu will be (I think!):
Mini quiches (made in a mini-muffin pan)
Cucumber sandwiches
Roast chicken sandwiches
Smoked salmon on brown bread rounds - topped with a bit os sour cream and chopped chives
Sliced up mini-battenburgs (to add a bit of colour)
Fairy cakes - we're going to buy them ready made & iced and then free-hand ice using a piping bag dd's first initial in a variety of pastel colours
The top tier from our wedding cake - we're getting it re-iced in September with dd's first & middle name. All white on white with white flowers.
HTH, mit x

Fot the cupcakes see if you can find an old fashioned tiered cake tray - try Oxfam (quick scrub & covered in pretty cakes it'll look gorgeous!).
mit x

Bog standard Nigella - 4oz flour, 4oz butter, 4oz sugar eggs. Bung it in the blender and lighten with milk. Make sure you use instant royal icing rather than just icing sugar/water to ice.
We jsut builta solid mound, think we did about 70 cakes, but the ones in the middle did look a bit squashed

I had Dd's christening a couple of months ago and served picnicy food..will give you a list of what we served and if you need any recipes then let me know! Hope it helps:

Whole salmon cooked night before with lemon, butter, parsley and chives
New potato salad with lemon, olive oil and mint
Marinated chicken drumsticks (either Nando's bbq sauce or Sainsbury?s sticky BBQ Sauce) wrapped the end of the drumstick in foil so easy to pick up
Nigella's pea, mint and avocado salad (went lovely with the salmon and everybody commented on how nice it was)
Jamie Oliver's pasta salad
Salady veg/pitta bread and dips
French bread, butter and pate (yum yum!)
Quiche's (either brought, tesco's finest smoked salmon quiche is r. yummy or delia's oniony quiche if homemade)
Chicken satay's, mixture of indian and chinese starters
Crisps, sausage rolls and mini sausages

For puddings I did a really yummy apple Danish cake, chocolate brownies and flapjacks and strawberries and raspberries served with double cream.

For Briony's christening cake we got a photo cake from Asda for only £8.00 and was really lovely and original although the cup cake idea sounds fab.

For the children we gave them a box from here each with a colouring pad, colouring pencils, bubbles and stickers and also a couple of cut out teddy bear sandwiches, their name spelt out in alphabet biscuits (Annabel karmel's teddy bear biscuits recipe), Philadelphia cheese dipper, carton of organic juice and a apple and carrot muffin.

Here is also a list which helped when thinking of things to pack:

Plastic sheet to put on the ground
Rugs to sit on
Paper napkins, kitchen towels, wet wipes
ice packs and insulated bag to keep drinks and food cool
Paper plates, cutlery and cups
Plastic cartons for transporting food in (something I completely forgot until the day before!
Two lots of pass the parcel
Couple of inflatable bouncy balls
Parachuty thing (can hire from toy library)
Bubble machine (from elc)
Spare clothes, plasters, camera charged and ready to go!
Cardboard boxes for travelling food and items
Serving spoons
Changing mat

I have all Jamie Oliver's, Nigella Lawson, Nigel Slater, Delia, Gary Rhodes, Barbecue bible and loads more if you need any recipes. Either email me or post a message and I'd be more than happy to help.

Hope I have helped somewhat.

Jules xox