We know how frustrating planning a birthday party for your kid can be; deciding the food alone brings on a headache, and that’s why we decided to compile a list of the top 15 children birthday party food ideas.
First thing’s first; you shouldn’t go overboard with your ideas and spend buckets of money on a mere birthday party; you can make it fun by being creative with the games, entertainment, and food. None of that necessitates a huge expenditure, and can, in fact, be accomplished with a limited budget. Just remember to give your kid love and attention on their special day, as this mom did, and they’re bound to have a good time.
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If you want a themed birthday party, be sure to bear in mind the expenses and the inconvenience, and try to keep it as simple, but as creative as possible without causing any trouble for yourself or the parents of your tiny guests. For instance, you can throw a Pokémon themed party, and it can be both thrilling and economical, as long as you exercise reasonable restraint. Today’s Parent has a few inspiring ideas for themes that you can use or take as a stepping-stone to put your own wacky visualizations into action.
The next important bit is planning the entertainment, and contrary to popular opinion, you don’t need to hire a clown or a magician to throw a successful party for your child. Simple games like a treasure hunt, if done well, can be immensely enjoyable, and it will require little effort from your end too. Colorful party items like hats and party favors can also either serve to complement the theme of your party or can simply add a touch of hue to the birthday environment. Remember to also put on some cheerful music to amp up the mood. For that, you need to look no further than our article on the 10 Best YouTube Children’s Songs.
Now that we’ve dealt with planning most of the major elements of a birthday party for kids, we have to move on to the most important segment of all: the food. Luckily for you, we’ve included a wide range of food ideas, picking the most often recommended ones, which are also very easy to make. We are sure that several food ideas on our list are bound to strike your fancy. Let’s get started with our list of top 15 children birthday party food ideas!
15. Cake Pops
Everyone loves food on a stick, and kids are certainly no exception to that. Cake pops are essentially small slices of cake coated with melted candy wafers and served, as the name implies, like a lollipop. The best part about these delectable little snacks is that they are extremely versatile: you can make them even more delicious by adding your own unique twist i.e. making your own glaze or decorating it creatively on top. Moreover, instead of sticking to the traditional bake-a-cake-and-cut-it-into-pieces, you can make various mixes and blend them together for one tasty cake pop, like in this surprise rainbow cake pop! And now, let’s see what else we have on our list of top 15 children birthday party food ideas
14. Mini Pizzas
Mini pizzas rank 14th on our list of top 15 children birthday party food ideas. They are a must-have for any kid’s party, and they’re easy to make too! Kids will also have their portions cut out for them so serving them won’t be messy. And of course, as with any pizza, you can let your imaginations run wild with different flavors and toppings, so with little effort, you’d have a wide assortment of mini-appetizers to satiate the hunger of your tiny guests. To amp up the excitement, you can also serve them on sticks, as shown in the picture below. For a good chicken pizza recipe, you can check out Food Network, or you can condense your favorite recipes to bite-sized portions.
13. Honey Joys
Up next on our list of top 15 children birthday party food ideas are honey joys, that are an old-time everyone’s favorite, and they’re exceedingly simple to make, so you’d have to expend little effort and time to quickly dish out several of these bundles of goodness. Taste has a great little recipe, but as with anything on this list, you can jazz it up with your own quirky ideas.
12. Potato Wedges
The much-revered potato finally makes an appearance on our list in the form of the celebrated potato wedges. Potato wedges or “jojos”, as they are called in certain parts of the United States, work as a perfect side to any dish, but are also mouth-watering enough to work as a snack on their own. You can either bake them, as this version of the recipe entails, or you can fry them for a crispier outcome.
11. Fruit Skewers
Definitely the healthiest treat on our list, fruit skewers are a good way to appease your kids, and get something healthy in them at the same time. And of course, as we’ve already said, food always tastes better on a stick. There are absolutely no restrictions holding you back; feel free to get the most exotic fruits you can find, chop them up to reasonable sizes, and then drive them through a skewer. You can also include blocks of cheese in your skewers if you please. Then you’re good to go!
10. Mini Burgers
Mini burgers or sliders, like the other foods on our list, are also very malleable: you can go down the traditional route with cheese, ham or veggie, or you can funk it up with some unusual ingredients to your liking. For the standard mini burger, Food Network has a great recipe which takes only 15 minutes to create eight burgers, leaving you time to focus on the other goodies on your menu.
9. Fairy Bread
For the Australians out there reading this, here’s to one of Australia’s most celebrated childhood delicacies: fairy bread. It’ll immediately catch the eye of every kid at the party, because, for those of you who don’t know, fairy bread is, in essence, a slice of bread covered with thousands of colorful sprinkles. For a step-by-step guide on how to make this simple treat, you can go through this exhaustive article on Wikihow.
8. Chocolate Crackle
Again in tribute to our Australian and New Zealander friends, we have chocolate crackle which ranks 8th on our list of top 15 children birthday party food ideas, a delectable snack that is bound to be a favorite. It’s also really simple to make: all you have to do is mix desiccated coconut, copha, cocoa powder, icing sugar and rice bubbles together and refrigerate. For exact quantities, you can refer to this Cadbury-powered recipe, although you can replace the Cadbury Bournville cocoa with your average, run-of-the-mill version if you please.
7. Cupcakes
A good cupcake is like a golden ray of sunshine: these miniature cakes with mouth-watering icings are everyone’s inevitable weakness. The sheer amount of flavors, decoration ideas and types of fillings mean that it’s difficult to know where to start. For the traditional route, here’s a good vanilla cupcake with a buttercream icing recipe. You can always use cocoa powder for chocolate and add some food coloring for red velvet. You can either stick to a simple filling with a pretty decoration as the picture shows, or experiment with different flavors and garnishes. For inspiration, check out this amalgamation of unique cupcakes.
6. Cheesy Meatballs
A good bite of cheese plays a crucial role in elevating a good meatball to even greater heights, and hence cheesy meatballs are one of our choices for our list of the top 15 children birthday party food ideas. This recipe uses cheddar, but feel free to experiment with other kinds of cheese, or perhaps even a mixture of cheeses, provided that it’s not too strong and doesn’t overpower the goodness of the meat!
5. Pigs in a Blanket
This universal treat which ranks 5th on our list of top 15 children birthday party food ideas, takes on many different forms in different countries, depending on its size, the type of pastry, and the filling. You can choose whether or not to wrap the sausage with cheese, and if so, which kind of cheese, and depending on the size of your sausage, you can transform the dish from a mere appetizing hors d’oeuvre to a hearty entree. This version by Food Network slightly deviates from the traditional pig-in-a-blanket with additional seasonings and ingredients, so perhaps you would want to use it, or merely take inspiration from it.
4. Biscuits
With some standard biscuit dough, you can create a variegated array of stunning biscuits. First thing’s first: you need dough, and for that you can refer to BBC goodfood, in case you don’t already have a set recipe that you follow. Then you go wild on the icing. Making the actual icing (or icings) will take a few minutes at most, but decorating it will require time, energy and extreme caution. Luckily, the Kitchn has an extremely helpful guide that covers everything.
3. Toffee Apple
Toffee or candy apples rank 3rd on our list of top 15 children birthday party food ideas. They are rooted in the season of autumn, and hence, Halloween and Guy Fawkes night, but they’ll make a good addition to your table provided you find some nice, hard apples. You can also store them for a couple of days before they go bad, so that’ll leave you time to focus on the other aspects of the birthday-planning process. BBC goodfood has an incredible recipe at hand, but don’t forget that you can use food coloring or gel to turn it a vibrant red, like a fresh apple. Make them look even more distinct by going down the unconventional route and using an array of different, eye-catching colors.
2. Mud Cups
Mud or dirt cups rank second on our list of top 15 children birthday party food ideas. They are not snacks: they are full-blown desserts, and can be whipped up in no time. There’s no hard and fast rule about what you put in, as long as the end product even remotely resembles dirt! Kraft has a simple enough recipe, and of course, you can replace their cool whip and instant pudding suggestions with regular whipped cream and pudding. Your garnishes can be weird and wonderful; from the customary gummy worms, to an assortment of fruits, you can decorate with practically everything. Take inspiration from this person who made their cups look like miniature pumpkin patches, or this idea about turning it into a graveyard! You can also add vanilla pudding or cream cheese to your mud cup for a creamier result.
1. Birthday Cake
The rest of the items on your table will pale in comparison to the star of the show, the birthday cake, which is why it takes up the number 1 spot on our list of the top 15 children birthday party food ideas. There are so many ideas for a birthday cake that it’s almost impossible to know what to pick, and then to know where to start. But you’ll be happy to know that most of the fancy, mesmerizing cakes that you see on display are simple cakes with exotic icing, like this pirate ship cake and this fire engine cake, or they owe it all to creative garnish, like this volcano cake and this awesome hedgehog cake. But for certain cakes, the surprise lies inside, and the moment of satisfaction when you cut into it and see its beautiful interior is unparalleled. Perhaps a layered rainbow cake might strike your fancy, but if not, there’s always this jelly cake with a scintillating external view. You might also just want to bake a cake with a unique flavor instead of focusing too much on the glaze, in which case this list by Huffingpost is the one for you!
