Kids Birthday Party Food Ideas
One of the best things about planning the food assortment for a kids birthday party is that it’s the perfect place to trim on your party budget if need be. With a child’s birthday party, there are a select few foods that the kids love to enjoy, presentation does not have to be extravagant or fancy, and buying in bulk is an awesome option that saves lots of money.
Simple Foods
For a kids birthday party, there are two typically simple food groups to focus on for the little ones—pizza and hot dogs. This is a long-time favorite and it’s a super easy menu to put together. Hot dogs are a wonderful choice because they are available to purchase in bulk and they come in meat, vegan, and kosher options alike (just in case any of your guests have a food allergy). They also come in miniature size, or as corn dogs even! A great way to make this fun and to the children’s liking is to set up a hot dog bar, in which the kids can layer on their favorite toppings! For pizza as the main dish, you have a couple of options here, too. Ordering in several pizzas is affordable and can take the stress off you to cook—and clean-up is a breeze! This gives you more time to have fun with the kids at the birthday party. If you opt not to have delivery pizza, then making it yourself offers lots of choices as well. Regular size pizza pies, miniature pizza bagels, and bite-sized pizza pockets are all beloved choices by the kids, and super easy to buy in bulk.
Fingerfood Style
If you are having finger food type of food, there are some great options that you could try making them at home. You could make mini pizzas, little sausage bread, or to make it more simple just serve cocktail sausages.
Snacks & Healthy Options
For side snacks, bowls of trail mix, chips, and pretzels make for great grab and go food. Other easy-to-eat bits are mini peanut butter and jelly sandwiches and veggie ranch cups. Make the mini peanut butter and jelly sandwiches as you would a normal sandwich and then cut it into four squares or triangles.
For healthier option, you could have fruit mix but to make it more exciting and fun, you can use cutters to create a shape of choice. Best fruits to use are watermelon and melons. Melons come in different colors so it would make the fruit mix very colorful. For something more creative, you can create fruit rainbow sticks. Best fruits for the sticks would be grapes, berries, pineapples and watermelons. Veggie ranch cups are a wonderful little snack, with ranch put into the bottom of a Dixie-sized cup and carrots and celery put in it. It’s a non-messy way for nutrition and scrumptiousness!
Cake & Desserts
Cake is obviously your main source of delectable dessert for a kids birthday party, but other treats are a good idea to do as well. Ice cream stations are an awesome treat for the kids, and they have a really fun time doing it! This is similar to a hot dog bar, but with ice cream. The kids get the chance to put all different kinds of their favorite toppings onto their ice cream, and as an extra plus, this is an activity in itself!
Drinks
We can’t forget the beverages for the party, either. Having plenty of water around is a given, but what about fun drinks? Punch is always a great choice because you can make large batches at once for all your little guests. Kool-aid mixes of non-staining colors like yellows and greens are yummy and give the kids more freedom to run around with them. Another popular option is individually packaged boxes of drinks, such as Capri Sun pouches or any juice boxes really. These are available to buy in bulk and offer a solution to no clean up!
Final Touch
Now that you have your food assortment listed and ready to go, adding a colorful and creative spin on it all is the final touch. This is where you get to take the theme of the birthday party and run with it! Serving trays and accessories can of course be a starting point to put the party’s theme into the food, but incorporating it into the food itself is the fun part. Make a large pizza into a cartoon Angry Bird using the pizza toppings, or put eyes made of cheese whiz on your hot dogs with toothpicks for little legs. Choose pink ice cream for the girls and Ninja Turtle shapes for the pretzels. Other accessories like decorative toothpicks and sugar figurines are also available to incorporate personality that the kids will love into the party food.
Food Ideas for a Teen Birthday Party
While a birthday cake is a given treat to have at any birthday party, what about the rest of the food? Coming up with a menu of food that’s appetizing while still being easy on the wallet and time is actually a pretty easy feat when it comes to a teenager’s birthday party specifically.
Grab and Go
There tends to be a universal food language when it comes to kids between the ages of 13 to 19, and while hunger choices might not be the healthiest, for a birthday party, this taste is ideal! For your teenage guests, stick with foods that translate well sitting out for the duration of the party (3-4 hours) and that are grab and go type foods. Some really great meat options are chicken nuggets, slider hamburgers, pigs in a blanket, mini-corndogs, and ham roll-ups. While chicken wings might sound like a great idea as well, keep in mind that any food with bones will end up being more of a hassle for clean-up and possibly safety for any party with main guest age being under 19.
Other really effortless food ideas for your teens include hot pockets, pizza rolls, cheese sticks, and of course—nachos! All you need to do is cover the Tortilla chips with delicious cheese! You could also be more creative and add ingredients such as spring onions, chopped up tomato on top. If you have children with allergy, it may be ideal to keep Tortilla chips and dips in a separate bowl and letting your teens dip with separately bowled chips, pretzels, or crackers. Be sure to have the right beverages for the guests to wash all this yummy grub down with plenty of water, lemonade, and soda. For colder times of year, hot chocolate and cider is always a hit as well.
Cake and Sweets
Even with a fantastic birthday cake, we can’t forget a few extra sweets! A couple of pans of sugar cookies, brownies, or just a few simple bowls of candied treats like Jelly Beans, Gummy Bears, M&M’s or Skittles makes for great grab and go handfuls to satisfy every guest’s sweet tooth.
Food Ideas for Adult Birthday Party
As we get older, we become more focused on putting healthier food into our bodies. With this in mind, it doesn’t mean you have to only serve salad at your adult birthday party, but it does mean that incorporating healthy fairs into your spread is a must.
Dips Dips Dips!
The ultimate adult birthday party food (besides the birthday cake, of course) is one or more yummy dips! Whether it’s salty or sweet, dips are all the rage for adult birthday parties, as they are filling, easy to eat, and the combinations for flavors and what you can accompany with the dips is endless. Cheese based dips with Velveeta, sour cream-based dips with spices such as ranch and chipotle, and mayonnaise-based dips with veggies like spinach and artichokes are all highly loved choices. Chips, pretzels, and crackers offer a satisfying crunchy sidekick to go with these dips, or carrots, celeries, and cucumbers also pair well (and give you your necessary healthy munchies!). Skewers are also a versatile option for food, and again, a great way to incorporate veggies or fruits into your dishes.
Moving away from dips, other fantastic food choices for an adult birthday party are chicken wings, unmessy/easy to eat filo cups with any kind of fillings you desire (think macaroni and cheese, or mashed potatoes), turkey or beef burger sliders, quesadilla wedges, and pepperoni pinwheels. Hummus, Tostitos, and jalapeno poppers are also party favorites. It is a good idea to have small bowls of mixed nuts, chips, popcorn, or candy that your guests can munch on throughout the party.
And don’t forget sweet treats like no bake cheesecake, jello, or pudding cups serve to satisfy your guests as they are waiting to cut the birthday cake!
Beverages
Beverages are a significant part of any party and you absolutely cannot do without water. Hydrating your guests on the constant is a necessity, and while soda is certainly on the menu, try to incorporate as many H20 based drinks as you can into your line-up. Lemonades and various teas are perfect examples of flavorful and super hydrating elixirs.
