Get Your Guests Buzzing With These Birthday Party Food and Treat Ideas

sweet 16 party themes

You’ve chosen a theme and invited your guests. Now all you need to do is figure out what treats to serve at your child’s 1st birthday party. It can often be difficult to choose a menu that is age appropriate yet appealing to all ages. Most parents and grandparents don’t want to eat chicken nuggets or cupcakes drowning in frosting, and most toddlers can’t yet chew a steak. Here are a few food ideas for one of the most popular birthday party themes for this age: bugs!
The Main Course
The bug theme is one of the most popular themes for a young child’s birthday party. Ladybugs and butterflies are often used for a girl’s party while worms and spiders are all boy! If you are planning to serve lunch or dinner at your party, you can grill up some hamburgers and create a buffet with bug themed toppings and side dishes such as:
• Fried Worms (French fried onions
• Ants on a Log (celery with peanut butter and raisins)
• Worms by the Inch (grapes on toothpicks with matchstick carrot antennae)
• Bumblebee Parts Salad (green salad with black olives and cheddar cheese cubes on top)
• Butterfly Wings (Nacho Cheese Doritos)
• Chips with Cricket Dust (sour cream and onion potato chips)
• Ladybug Blood (raspberry lemonade or fruit punch)
Beetle Juice (limeade)

sweet 16 party themes

Cupcakes or Birthday Cake
You can easily transform any flavor of cupcake into lady bugs by using red food color paste, black licorice and candy eyes. Be sure to use color paste rather than food coloring as it will give you a more vibrant shade of red. Color paste can sometimes be hard to find in grocery stores, but most craft stores or party supply stores carry it.

You can also frost any flavor of cupcake green and arrange them on a cookie sheet in the shape of a caterpillar. Again, licorice can be used to make antennae. If you want the caterpillar to resemble the one depicted in Eric Carle’s The Very Hungry Caterpillar, you can bake a circle cake that is about twice the diameter of your cupcakes, frost it red and add candy eyes.

Want something a little creepier and crawlier? Then you need spider cupcakes! Start with white icing, use black piping create a web and top it off with a plastic spider rings found at most any party supply store. Most people choose to use cupcakes for this age group because they are easier to eat, but this theme lends itself well to a variety of different cake options as well. A butterfly cake is an easy one to make.

sweet 16 party themes

Start by baking a cake in an 8- or 9- inch round pan. Cut it in half, then swap the sides so that the two round sides are touching and form wings. Place a Twinkie or Zinger between the wings. Frost and decorate with some of the birthday boy or girl’s favorite candies.


 

Take Home Treats


No party is complete (whether it’s their first party or sweet 16 party themes) without party favors and take home treats for the younger guests. Gummy worms are a must have! Individually portioned bags of Bug Bite graham crackers are also popular and age appropriate You may also want to include a few non-edible treats as well such as plastic bugs.


Posterous theme by Cory Watilo