Grad Party Part 2 - Food

For decor, see Part 1 HERE.
For the complete party recap, see Part 3 HERE.

The decor for my mom's grad party took about a week's worth of evenings after work to make. The food was a lot easier. Since we were going for a high tea style party, I decided that tea sandwiches were the best bet. I just looked at photos online and then went with whatever I thought could be made easily in large amounts.

Aren't they pretty?

So here's what I came up with for sandwiches:

- Asparagus with lemon cream cheese on white bread
- Cucumber and chive butter on both pumpernickel AND rye
- And, for the less adventurous of the crowd - Ham and swiss on wheat bread (also made some on white for extra picky eaters)

For the asparagus sandwiches, I used that photo on the left as inspiration. I rolled them up w/ white bread, but I did it w/ 2 pieces of asparagus facing different ways, and then just cut it in half once rolled so it would make 2 sandwiches and every piece would have the stalks sticking up.My step-dad went crazy for these sandwiches!

My favorite sandwich was the cucumber on pumpernickel, but my husband preferred it on the rye, so it's all a matter of taste! Also, I actually ended up using green onions instead of chives - I just cut them really thinly. I mixed room temp butter with the onions, some garlic powder, salt and pepper, and a tiny bit of lemon juice, then spread it on both slices of bread, and cut into triangles.

The ham and swiss sandwiches were spread with a honey mustard - literally just 1/2 dijon mustard and 1/2 honey, and then 2 slices of black forest ham and one slice of swiss cheese. I made more of these than the others because I honestly thought people would be picky, but I was surprised to find that most people went for the veggie sandwiches!

We made all of the sandwiches the morning of the party at my mom's house - my poor parents - I go to visit them and turn their kitchen into a total disaster area - oops!

Desserts I made in advance, and I was slightly more creative with them. I wanted to make desserts that had some connection to literature. I thought about making Turkish Delight (from the Narnia series), but I'm kinda iffy on candy-making - seems too dangerous to me. I tried a couple of Google searches for foods from literature and was able to come up with several, but not many desserts. I did keep seeing things for butterbeer (Harry Potter) and knew I wanted to do something with that, but wasn't entirely sure what.

Since I was making a 12 hour drive with whatever I made, I wanted it to be small and portable, and not have to do too much to it once I got there, so cupcakes were out - I had no desire to frost 60 cupcakes while trying to rush doing everything else for the party. Instead, I decided to make "Butterbeer Brownie Bites". If you want to make these, here's what I did.

-Make a triple batch of your favorite brownie batter recipe (I made a double batch of dark chocolate and a single batch of milk chocolate)

-Mix in butterscotch chips

-Pour into greased pan, drizzle butterscotch over the top, and bake according to directions

-Cool and chill (chilling is important)

-Once chilled, the brownies will have firmed up some, making them easier to cut into 1"x1" pieces

-Place in a freezer bag if you are transporting them.

-Once you have these on the serving tray, you can add a tiny bit of whipped cream to each one (I usually prefer to make my own, or use cool whip, but it might be easier to use the canned kind for this since the pieces are so small), and then drizzle butterscotch sauce over the top. (We realized once we got to the venue that we had forgotten the whipped cream at home and didn't want to worry about it, so I just used the butterscotch drizzle and it was perfectly fine.)

While I was looking for literary treats, I found a blog where there girl makes food from all kinds of books - so cool! I decided to make her recipe for Earl Grey and Lemon scones as a tribute to The Da Vinci Code. My love of Earl Grey is inherited from my mother, so I knew these were a must. I cut circles and then cut those into quarters since the whole party was finger-food.

Top left is the photo from the website, then my little scone pieces, and the ingredients.

We also had fruit to complement the pastries - strawberries and pineapple, and my mom had some caramel chocolates on hand that she put out as well.

I saw this adorable photo online of individual crudite cups and thought it was such a great idea! Not only does it add color to the table, but it's perfect for a party because people can just take it and go without having to worry about a messy bowl and spoon for dips or anything like that. I found little clear plastic shotglasses at Party City that worked out perfectly. My 15 year old brother ate approximately 3395382749 of these babies.

This photo has peppers and cucumbers - we just used tri-color peppers. You could put in other veggies though, like strips of portabello mushrooms, carrots, snow peas, etc! Anything long enough to stick out of a shotglass.

I only had one drink in mind and then my mom handled the rest - she did plain iced tea, a pineapple iced tea, and a citrus-cucumber-mint water. I did something that I called "The Grape Gatsby" which is not at all from the book - I just wanted to use the play on words haha! It was half white grape juice, half Sprite (or whatever lemon-lime pop you prefer), and then a bunch of frozen green grapes. The Sprite makes it bubbly so it looked like champagne which kinda works for Gatsby since the drinks were always flowing! Drink photos to come in Part 3!

I also made all these little labels so I wouldn't spend all night answering, "What is this?" The backing is just a sparkly white cardstock, and then I used more pretty floral cardstock cut into different shapes with scalloped scissors.

So that's it for food! Here's a tiny little sneak peek of some of the food in action at the party.

Asparagus and paper flowers, oh my!