Adult Easter Party - Part 1: Savories

Once a year, we like to throw a nice big party.  It gives me an excuse to go entirely overboard while having people over.... we do tons of food, specialty cocktails, decorations, games... the works. We usually only have one per year because CA only lets me have one it's a lot of work.

Honestly, my favorite things to host are showers... bridal or baby, I don't care.  But I love showering other people with love and for some reason these parties usually revolve around brunch and I LOVE breakfast food.  So, I was super excited when we decided to have an Easter Brunch to go with our Adult Easter Party.

The whole Adult Easter Party idea came from a dear friend of mine who hosted this party where we used to live.  The concept is that Easter Egg Hunts aren't just for kids so you should have a hunt for things that adults like... like booze and lottery tickets.  Yes, we hid miniature bottles of liquor and plastic eggs full of lottery tickets in our backyard and, surprisingly, no one got an elbow to the face (my friends are pretty competitive when it comes to games).

For activities, we had the hunt, of course.  We also had some old school games like egg spoon races, ring toss and a water balloon toss.   There was a scoreboard, a points system and a grand prize which was a basket full of more booze and lottery tickets.

For decorations, there was the peep topiary, plastic egg wreath and Spring subway art.

However, the most important part of the party (to me, at least) was the food.  Today we are going to talk about the savory food that we served at the party. 

Fruit technically isn't savory, but I didn't put sugar in it so it counts.  There had to be one healthy thing at the party and this was it.

I got the little sword toothpicks for fun and cut cubes of pineapple, cantaloupe and strawberries.

Easy!  I like to have at least one healthy thing at my parties so you'll usually find either fruit or veggies and dip.  It's not that exciting, but I think people appreciate having one thing they can eat without guilt.

Speaking of guilt.  This is Meat Wrapped Meat.... or Death Dogs... or whatever other meaty, unhealthy name you want to call it.

I served this at a cocktail party once and now every single time I have a party people ask me to make these.  I also make a ton of them and never have any left, ever.

I'm going to do a separate post on Meat Wrapped Meat so stay tuned but it's essentially Little Smokies, wrapped in bacon and rolled in brown sugar.  You really can't go wrong.

The "main dish" at our brunch was mini Chicken & Waffles.  This was a new dish for us, but they turned out so yummy.

We actually made two versions of these.  One for the masses and another for our favorite Gluten Free friend and, in all seriousness, you could NOT tell the difference between the Glutenous and Non-Glutenous versions.  Seriously.

The glutenous waffles were made using the buttermilk waffle recipe from the Better Homes & Gardens cookbook.  I wanted to be sure the waffles had a really neutral flavor so the fried chicken could be the star of the show.  I also wanted to use buttermilk since we did a buttermilk soak on the chicken and things that match taste better together.

The non-glutenous waffles were made using the buttermilk waffle recipe on the back of the Gluten Free Bisquick box.  I typically don't like mixes but since there was a lot of food to make the day of the party, I cheated a little.  I think they tasted like regular waffles and would totally eat them.  (BTW, have I ever told you my feelings on recipes found on the backs of cans and boxes?  They're usually really good - Chocolate Chip Cookies off the back of the chocolate chips, Pumpkin Pie on the can of pumpkin, Magic Bars off the sweetened condensed milk).

OK - chicken.  CA was in charge of the chicken because frying scares me.  The only thing I can fry are french fries in my miniature fry daddy and I try not to do that because I have no self control when it comes to fries.  I can't help it, I have a hereditary addition to ketchup.  CA used Alton Brown's Fried Chicken recipe as a guide.  Instead of a whole chicken, we used boneless, skinless chicken thighs and cut them into 3-4 pieces per thigh.  They turned out awesome - really flavorful because we used the thighs and from the great mix of seasonings.

For the gluten free chicken he used the exact same recipe but just substituted Gluten Free All Purpose Flour for the regular flour.  There was no difference in taste or texture.

I apologize I did not take a picture of the syrup we served with the Chicken & Waffles.  However, you can probably envision it.  It looks like syrup.  What you can't see (if you could see it) was the stuff that made it extra yummy.  I heated one bottle of real maple syrup with a shot of bourbon and the zest of half an orange.  Luckily, I have leftovers so you know what I'll be eating for breakfast for a while.  Booze for breakfast is totally normal.

Eggs are a requirement for brunch so we served two different mini quiches.  I went crustless and used the same quiche base for both so the whole recipe is a bit of a mash up.  I wish I'd written it all down while I was doing it, but I did not.

This version has shredded potatoes, chorizo and manchego in it. Mmm. The filling for these little buddies is from this recipe. (Warning, I had to bake these quiches for much longer than the spinach version.  I think it has to do with all the grease deliciousness in the chorizo.

The other version has spinach, mushrooms and feta in it.  Oddly, more than one person asked me what meat was in these.  I think it was the baby portabella mushrooms in there that made them taste meatier.  The filling for these came from this recipe (which I've actually made as written for a separate occasion and it's really good).

The reason I used the same egg mixture in both quiches is because I'm lazy.  It was just easier to make one big batch of quiche liquid and fill both versions up with that and it worked really well.   For 84 mini quiches I used:

1/4 cup cornstarch, 2 cups heavy cream, 6 eggs, 4 egg yolks, Salt, Pepper and a pinch of Nutmeg. 

I used my immersion blender to blend it all up and make sure the eggs were thoroughly broken up and then poured it on top of all the fillings in the mini muffin cups.  My tip of the day is to make sure you have cheese on the bottom and on the top of the mini quiches.  The cheese on the bottom creates a kind of seal that makes the quiches easier to get out of the pan.  The cheese on top is pretty :)

All right, so that's the savory stuff.  Tomorrow comes the sweets.  I know that's what you're waiting for but you're just going to have to be patient for one more day.

Julie