Homemade Sweets for Birthday Parties

I kinda love birthday parties, and by birthday parties I mean kids, as an adult birthday are not that interesting, but kids birthday parties with lots of foods and cakes are great and with time I’ve baked for a lot of these, sometimes just adding one or two things to the birthday table and other times doing pretty much everything myself, so now I kinda know what works and what doesn’t.

So nothing better than share some of my acquired wisdom hehehe, so these are some of the things I learned, that might help you on your own birthday party.

Tips and Tricks for Birthday Parties

If the party is short like 1 or 2 hours, then focus on the sweets – Kinds have a natural affinity for sweets and since the party is short it’s best to just give them what they want.

If the party is long, like a whole morning or a whole day, then mix and match – You will need a mix of sweet and savory treats as well as more drinks, normally I would put about 80% on the table, but during the party I would add more or different treats just to make it more interesting, if it’s the whole day, around lunchtime I would put some new savory and sweets just to give something different for the kids to try.

If the party is small – You can have more variety and more tricky foods and sweets, that need to be served or that need cold, things like ice creams, cheesecake or fresh fruit.

If the party is large – If you have a mob of kids, keep it simple, focus on delicious treats and make those in bulk, also make sure it’s food that will not spoil if left unattended for a couple of hours, so no cream cheese, no mayo, use butter, use hard cheeses.

You don’t need to bake everything yourself – Especially if a party is large, there is no point in you making drinks or frying your own chips, just buy these, but baking your own sausage rolls, make sandwiches, cookies, cake, those you can easily make at home and in bulk.

Make the food easy to serve, easy to eat – You know what I mean, you always want individual servings if possible, the only thing to cut and serve is the birthday cake, so make gelatin in disposable cups, instead of cake, make cupcakes or make a square cake and cut it into cubes, instead of whole sandwiches, cut these in half.

Make extra for gifts – A thing that I love when I was a kid is the parties that gave you a small gift before you left, but most of the time these gift bags were like a kitkat or m&m’s, but instead of buying a commercial candy, just make some extra cookies and wrap a couple so while leaving they can take with them, easy peasy.

Homemade Recipes Perfect for a Birthday Party

Brazilian Chocolate Ant Cake – Perfect birthday cake, no? Come on… it’s a delicious soft and moist cake with chocolate sprinkles, what’s not to love! ;D

Portuguese Chocolate Salami with Pistachios – Classic sweet, I know I said above that it’s best to give individual servings, but you can cut the whole chocolate salami before serving, even better you can cut the slices in like 3 parts, so you can have like chocolate salami sticks hehehe 🙂

Portuguese Sugar Sand Cookies – Another simple crunchy cookie, just combine all the ingredients, mold balls, sprinkle with sugar, that easy and simple, perfect for a birthday party.

Homemade Moist Carrot Cake with Chocolate – Classic carrot cake, this is a great birthday cake, in my opinion and if you love carrots a fantastic cake and recipe, I make this one at least once every year ;D

Typical French Madeleines Cakes – I thought it was a nice change, but any kind of small cake or cupcake will do, madeleines are just more fancy hahaha, but you can make a ton of them super easy, as well as easily make variations, add chocolate chips or powdered chocolate for a chocolate version, add cinnamon for a cinnamon version, add orange peel for an orange version, you can make it any way you want it.

Portuguese Coconut Kiss – I love these, it’s such a simple recipe, kinda a no-brainer you can make 2 bowls full in no time, especially if you love coconut hehehe.