Serve food they already love.
Christmas parties are enjoyed for the food as much as they are for the activities. Serve kid-friendly dishes your guests are sure to adore by appealing to their holiday spirit. Kids prefer foods they are already familiar with, so serve old favorites with a decorative spin instead of completely unfamiliar dishes. With a few decorative elements, make each item as much fun to look at as it is to eat.
Finger Foods
Pinwheels are a festive addition to the party table, and a way to get vegetables into picky eaters. Combine 2 packages of cream cheese with 1 package of ranch dressing mix. Mince green and red bell peppers, celery, green onions, and green olives with pimentos. Mix into the cream cheese, then spread onto flour tortillas. Roll the tortillas, then slice them 1-inch thick. The red and green matches the holiday and they are simple for children to pick up and eat.
Make little gift-shaped appetizers with the cream cheese mixture. Shape the cream cheese mixture into square box shapes that fit on top the snack cracker of your choice. Cut a carrot into thin strips and wrap around the cream cheese like ribbon. Use green onions sliced in half as ribbons, too. Arrange the gifts on a nice platter.
Sandwiches
Make sandwiches with the filling of your choice. Use large Christmas cookie cutters to cut the sandwiches into holiday shapes. Add drops of red or green food coloring to homemade bread dough or knead it into frozen bread dough before baking and use the dyed bread to make the sandwiches. Use green for Christmas trees or red for Santa Claus shapes.
Use round cutters in several sizes to make a Christmas tree stacked sandwich. Cut 4 circle sandwiches in varying sizes. Push a skewer through the center with the largest circle on bottom and the smallest on top. Cut out a star from a chunk of cheddar cheese using a mini cookie cutter and place it on the top of the skewer. It looks like a Christmas tree when complete.
Desserts
Serve each child their very own snowman cake. Mix up a boxed or scratch white cake batter. Fill flat-bottomed ice cream cones 3/4 full with the batter and stand them up on a cookie sheet. Bake and cool. Frost with white icing and use candies to make a snowman face on each one. Use green- and red-colored ice cream cones for a more festive appearance.
Make green sherbet desserts. Roll a piece of wax paper into a cone shape and place inside a party hat. Set the point of each party hat in a glass to hold it upright. Soften lime sherbet and scoop into the cones. Freeze hard for 2 to 3 hours. Cut taffy or other soft candy into star shapes. Peel the paper from the sherbet and set each ice cream tree into a bowl. Place the star on top with a toothpick and sprinkle candy jimmies or glitter onto each tree before serving.
Tags: cream cheese, bread dough, cheese mixture, Christmas tree, cream cheese mixture, cream cones
