I took home some of our popular wood serving boats and bamboo skewers last week to use for some weekend entertaining and here's some of the ways that I used them.
Friday night: Cookie cutter sandwiches and chips made a great late in the day snack while the we hung around the pool with friends after work.
Saturday: The kids had a mid morning snack with mini pancake muffins I purchased at the grocery store. I added some cream cheese and fresh fruit to make these as yummy to look at as they were to eat.
Saturday: Chicken sliders with pretzels for lunch. Gotta love mini sliders ... they are so easy to store in the freezer and when you present them in these wood serving boats they make last minute entertaining a breeze.
Sunday: Another mid day snack for the kids! Peanut butter cookie cutter sandwiches with banana slices and strawberries. Have a nut allergy? Use a spreadable cheese instead!
I loved how natural the serving boats look and although they are disposable, I was easily able to wipe them out and reuse them if they were originally used to contain food items like chips and candies that were not messy.
The wood serving boats looked fabulous with our mason jars (available in stores only), daisy mason jar lids and paper straws. Adults seem to like using the mini mason jar glasses just as much as the kids.
Just in case you are wondering how I made the cookie cutter sandwiches ... here's my tricks and tips ...
I used a star cookie cutter but you can use any shape you want. Just keep in mind the size of your serving tray. I usually prep all of my food first. Any veggies to be used as garnishes on the bamboo skewers are washed and set off to the side in small bowls. I usually cut all of the sandwich elements (bread, cheese, etc) separately so I don't waste any food. (Who am I kidding? The kids and I eat all of the food scraps while we are preparing these!!) Assemble each sandwich as you wish using the cut out shapes.
One tip that I do have is that many cold meats don't cut well unless the meat is thick ... so I will cut the cold meats in between two slices of bread as shown in photo "two" above. Keep in mind that you don't have to use the cookie cutter for every layer of your sandwich. Bacon and a little bit of lettuce would look great sticking out of a "turkey, cheese, bacon, tomato and lettuce sandwich" ... Yum!!
Another tip: If you are using spreadable foods such as peanut butter, jam, etc add them to the cookie cutter bread shapes instead of making the sandwich and trying to cut it out like I did with the cold meats. It will save you time cleaning the cookie cutters in between each cut.
To make the veggie garnishes on the bamboo skewers I try to arrange the veggies so that the veggies stay in place on the skewers. You can see that I "tied" a piece of carrot (I used a veggie peeler to create the long thin pieces of carrot) between the cucumber and grape tomato. The cucumber slice kept the carrot from falling down.
To make the bamboo skewers stand up straight on a cookie cutter sandwich, you need to make sure that the sandwich is thick or the stick will fall over from the weight of the veggies. I usually make my cookie cutter sandwiches triple deckers.
Posts
⋅No comments
Post a Comment