what to put on the food plates at party for 5 year olds?

[mckenzie]

I've never done this myself before having usually gone for the lazy option of having swimming pool party etc where the food is all laid on.
Anyway, this time I'm doing it myself and just thought i'd check if you guys have any great tips for what to put on the plates. I have seen soooooooooooooooo much wastage at previous parties and it will break my heart if i end up throwing loads and loads of food away.

I plan on putting the food on each individual plate rather than having large platters that the children then help themselves to as from my limited experience I feel the first option is quicker and easier all round.

The normal seems to be
sandwich or 2
cocktail sausage
tomato/cucumber/carrot batton
few crisps
carton of drink.

Surely i must be able to make it more interesting than that? No??

quail's eggs?

do they go well with frazzles?

quail egg flavour frazzles silly

love your lettuce cake idea

suggest cranberry coulis as a filling

I do fruit kebabs and just use skewers with the pointed bit cut off, still not totally safe but slightly less lethal. I always ask parents to stop to help supervise and have quite a firm manner so the kids only eat when they are sat up at the tables anyway.

Something I've done for loads of parties and it allways goes down well. A bit of a faff(not as hard as it sounds) but is done the day before so not to bad.

Slice a large orange in half ( make the cut through where the stem would be IYSMI)

get as much juice out as possible.

Scoop out all the bits that are left but don't pierce the skin.

you will be left with two orange "bowls".

Do this for a few oranges (ok... say two )

Make up jelly with the juice and water but use 50% more jelly than the packet recommends ( you want the jelly to set quite firm)

pour into the orange "bowls" and leave in the fridge.

Just before the party food is served cut up the bowls into 3 or 4 slices. the jelly looks like real orange.

Its a non messy way to eat jelly and the kids love discovering that its not real orange but jelly.

I am not a big party food organiser and even I manage these, mostly because the kids just love them so much.

My dd and her friends think jelly boats which are a similar things are fab.

Again scoop out orange put unset jelly into half oranges and leave to set. Then vut in half with a serated knife so you ave a boat shape and add a sail with a cocktail stick and sugar paper. If you make them in lots of different colours they look fantastic when displayed.