We celebrated my daughter’s fifth birthday this weekend past, and she had her heart set on a Princess party, which is ironic because she’s never really watched any of the original princess movies or read the books. It must be something inherent in girls!
In choosing foods to suit the Disney Princess theme, I had to look closely at the stories, and here’s what I came up with:
1. Snow White’s Poisoned Apples
Well, that could not have been easier.
Buy red apples. Polish them up a bit. Put them in a bowl. Job done.
I didn’t expect the kids would really eat them, to be honest, but every last apple was eaten by the end of the party!
2. Cinderella’s Pumpkin Patch
Cinderella’s Fairy Godmother turns her pumpkin into a carriage, and mice from the field into horses. What simpler way to recreate pumkins, especially in the Autumn months, than using clementines! Peel them, and remove as much of the pith as you can, and they look like little pumpkins. Cut a stalk of celery into the ‘stalks’ for the pumpkins and stuff them inside. Again, the kids devoured these!
For the mice, use two meringues, stuck together with melted white chocolate. I cut pink marshmallows ‘slices’ with scissors as that shapes them, and stuck them to the meringues. With more time on my hands, I’d have used the white chocolate on them too as the ears kept falling off. I used a black food pen for eyes and whiskers on some of the mice, before one of the kids ran off with it and I had to use a blue gel pen for the rest. Suffice it to say the black looked less creepy. But it worked okay enough.
3. Belle’s Portrait Gallery
We’ve subscribed to the Disney Cakes and Sweets series from the very beginning, but I realised recently that you can actually buy individual books too, if you want to, and those also come with the beautiful moulds and baking bits that we used.
For these, I used about 8 blocks of white chocolate at a time, melting them in a glass bowl over a pot of boiling water. If you use a Thermomix®, you can do it on 37C for perfectly tempered chocolate too.
Add a drop or two of food colouring, as needed, and allow to set. Obviously doing this three shapes at a time is tedious, but it’s worth it in the end. I visualise these as a series of paintings, waiting to be hung on a wall! These Beauty and the Beast moulds are from issue 52 and cost £3.99
4. Crown sandwiches
These are also from Disney Cakes and Sweets, issue 17 [also £3.99], but you can pick up various versions around the web.
Again, easy and quick to do too. Butter your bread, and put the filling on, and press down to cut the shapes. My husband always moans that there’s a lot of waste with these, but I don’t think there really is. If you imagine most little people don’t eat the crusts anyway, you can often lay your shapes out in such a way to minimise the wastage.
We did sandwiches with ham, some with cheese, a few with cucumber and cream cheese and some salmon. I also made a tea for the adults, just cutting each sandwich into five ‘fingers’. They went down quite well too!
5. Aurora’s (Lemon)ade
Aurora, the made up name for Sleeping Beauty, needs saving, so who will come to her aid? She is also the only original princess who wore a pink dress, so it seems fitting that a pink drink is named for her.
I discovered a beautiful naturally pink lemonade recipe, which I’ll share soon.
I hope those five easy Disney Princess party food ideas are helpful and take some pressure off on party day!
I decided to put the dip into a bowl and hover the bowl inside the mouth of the pumpkin. I don’t know if that’s necessary or if you can just put it in the pumpkin, but I decided it would be easier in this instance to keep cool, and that the pumpkin itself was reusable for a number of days and other recipes if not. Also, if you’re particularly skilled at carving (I’m not!) a fake candle inside, under the dip could look very pretty too.
