St. Patrick's Day Children's Party Food Ideas
Serve Traditional Irish Food and Fun Green Treats
Feb 22, 2009
Kids love eating oddly colored children's party food, and a St. Patrick's Day celebration is the perfect opportunity to serve all-green treats. Imaginative party-planners can whip up a fun menu of St. Patrick's Day party foods by mixing traditional Irish food with foods that are either naturally green or dyed green with food coloring. Health-conscious hosts can offer wholesome options like green vegetables and green fruits.
(Note: Check that no children are allergic to nuts, eggs, kiwi, soy, dairy, or other common allergenic foods.)
Serve St. Patrick's Day Appetizers
Begin with a variety of green finger foods. Children may enjoy snacking on:
- green pistachio nuts.
- green tortilla chips with guacamole dip.
- hard-boiled eggs with dyed green shells.
For a vegetable snack tray (served with a green dip made from mixing green food coloring into white french onion or ranch dip), arrange wholesome green vegetables such as:
- broccoli.
- celery.
- sliced zucchini.
- edamame.
- pickles.
- green olives.
- sliced green bell peppers.
For a fruit snack tray, include healthy fruits such as:
- green grapes.
- green apple slices.
- green pear slices.
- honeydew melon.
- kiwi slices.
Serve St. Patrick's Day Entrées and Side Dishes
For St. Patrick's Day entrées and side dishes, serve a selection of traditional Irish foods, regular green foods, and foods dyed green. Garnish when appropriate with big sprigs of green parsley.
Traditional Irish dishes that children may enjoy include:
- colcannon (made from mashed potatoes, cabbage, onions, and meat such as ham or bacon).
- Irish stew (made from lamb, potatoes, and onions).
- Irish soda bread, which can be served with green butter and mint jelly.
Another option is to serve potatoes a variety of ways, such as:
- boiled.
- baked and served with green sour cream.
- mashed and tinted green.
- French fried and served with green ketchup.
Serve vegetarians or health-conscious guests healthy options like:
- a green salad made from lettuce, spinach, kale, or other leafy green vegetables.
- steamed green vegetables such as asparagus, peas, broccoli, or sugar snap peas.
- zucchini muffins.
A final option is to serve regular meals that happen to be green. For example, spinach pasta with basil pesto sauce makes a hearty main course, as do wrap sandwiches made with spinach tortillas.
Serve St. Patrick's Day Drinks
The simplest option is water with lime wedges. Sweeter St. Patrick's Day drinks include:
- limeade.
- lime punch made with lime sherbet.
- green punch made from lemon-lime soda and green Kool-Aid.
- milk or white hot chocolate, dyed green.
Serve St. Patrick's Day Desserts
When inventing St. Patrick's Day desserts, keep Irish symbols and the color green in mind. For example, lime jello can be cut into shamrock shapes, and red, orange, yellow, green, blue, and purple jello can be arranged in stripes in a cake or cookie pan to create a jello rainbow.
St. Patrick's Day party guests will enjoy a variety of green frozen treats, which can be served with toppings such as green sprinkles, green maraschino cherries, green apple syrup, and mint syrup. Consider offering:
- green popsicles.
- pistachio ice cream.
- mint chocolate chip ice cream.
- green tea ice cream.
- lime sherbet.
- lime basil sorbet served with sprigs of mint leaves.
For baked treats, children will enjoy decorating cupcakes or sugar cookies with green icing, green sprinkles, and green colored sugars. Or hosts might serve:
- circles of shortbread decorated like gold coins.
- sandwich cookies with green icing filling.
- a leprechaun hat dessert made from cupcakes.
For a healthy dessert alternative, serve vanilla yogurt mixed with green food coloring.
For an easy dessert option, serve a buffet of green candy such as lollipops, gumdrops, M&Ms, Lifesavers, jellybeans, sour apple hard candy sticks, mints, rock candy, Skittles, Marshmallow Peeps®, and green foil-wrapped chocolates.
With a little planning and imagination, hosts can create a St. Patrick's Day menu full of children's party food that is fun, delicious, and healthy! And, once the menu is set, hosts can check out ideas for fun St. Patrick's Day party decorations and kids' activities.
 |
 |
 |
 |
 |
