Yesterday was Q’s birthday. While he spent the day at work, I spent the day prepping for a little get together at our place. I wanted to make some snacks and desserts for our friends before hitting the bar. I put together a menu of finger foods/easy apps. We had spinach balls, pizza dip, and mac and cheese bites for our savory goodies and s’mores muffins and oreo stuffed chocolate cookies for dessert. Let me tell you those oreo stuffed chocolate cookies are great for a party. People are always baffled at how you get the oreo in the cookie!
Spinach Balls (recipe coming this week): Spinach, Parmesan, Bread Crumbs. These guys are the perfect finger food. We served them with some pizza sauce. Yum.
Mac and Cheese Bites- We made two different sizes of these (mainly because we had 1 mini muffin tin and 1 regular muffin tin and wanted to cook them at the same time). I was worried these wouldn’t turn out, but they turned out perfectly. They have a cracker crust bottom which keeps them intact and the mac and cheese was cooked just right. Again these are a perfect snack food.
Pepperoni Pizza Dip- This was THE hit of the party. Served with some triscuits and Fritos, this tastes exactly like pizza. The guys could not get enough. This was the first dish to go!
Oreo Stuffed Chocolate Chip Cookies and S’mores Muffins – I made these in advance since they didn’t have to be heated. The S’mores muffins were more time intensive than I initially imagined. Instead of an hour, it took close to 2.5, but then again I was working with one mini muffin tin!
The Oreo Cookies were easy (really can’t screw up that recipe), but I had some issues with the S’mores muffins. My first batch sunk. They looked like little cups, not like muffins.
Before:
So I called my mom, the chef and we problem solved. We added 1/3 cup of flour to the remaining dough to make it more cakey and I added 5 minutes to the cooking time (5 minutes is a LOT for baking). The result was perfect. We also talked about using the sunken muffins as little cups for ice cream if the second batch didn’t rise.
After:
Oh and I almost forgot! We made punch and served it out of mason jars. Hidden alcohol made this baby dangerous.
Vodka Punch
Serves 20
Ingredients:
- 2 quarts cranberry juice cocktail
- 2 cans (6 ounce size) frozen lemonade
- 5 cups vodka
- 3 quarts 7-UP, chilled
- ice cubes
Mix all ingredients together in a punch bowl.
Delicious! It was a great party and I was so happy I could celebrate with Q.
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