Need Ideas for B-Day TF Menu (4 years old)

[eastkygal]

DD1 will be having her b-day party this weekend. We will have several families here. I'd expect about 5 kids and 8 adults or so. I'd love to do a TF menu for the party as many of the adults have asked me about our lifestyle. What are some easier ideas that I could cook for a lot of folks in not a horrible amount of time during the party?

Also, I know NT has several cake recipes, but what about icing. I always make and decorate DD's cake myself. Last year we didn't do TF, and I used shortening and powdered sugar to make the icing which I then colored and decorated with. I'd love ideas on what to do about that.

[gen24]

Here is the icing I made when my DS turned 1. It was so good and easy to make (I used honey instead of stevia and didn't use the orange zest)

Ingredients

1/2 cup coconut oil, melted in a glass bowl
9 drops of liquid stevia (alternatively, you could use a couple of teaspoons of raw honey)
1 packed teaspoon orange zest
1/2 teaspoon vanilla extract
pinch of salt

Directions

Mix all ingredients into warm coconut oil. You are now going to place the bowl into the freezer in order to cool it down. It is very important to check on it every couple of minutes to catch it before it gets too cold. You want to take it out of the freezer right when it starts to get cloudy. At this point the cold bowl (and your cool kitchen) will continue to turn the liquid oil into a solid. Continue to whisk the frosting as it gets cloudier and cloudier and eventually turns into a whipped butter consistency. The idea is to get a bit of air into it. Once it is to a whipped (very soft) butter consistency plop it onto your cooled cake. Frost it very quickly before the coconut oil hardens. It will seem like a pretty thin layer of frosting, but it is just enough.

[CaraboosMama]

As far as the frosting goes...you can use a tiny amt. of beet juice to color cream cheese frosting pink. It works well & doesn't add any beet flavor (you only need a SMALL amt...maybe 1/4 tsp.) I would do the NT Carrot Cake recipe & cream cheese frosting recipe - maybe as cupcakes? Or with all the plentiful berries this time of year...maybe some kind of berry dessert.

The buffalo wing recipe in NT is good if you can find a good price on the chicken. We had a party recently and made those, a bunch of salads, cut up cheese, veggies & olives, guacamole & some homemade tortilla chips, fruit salad. We decided that we didn't want to serve anything that we don't feel comfortable eating (i.e. we didn't want a whole bunch of soda and other garbage hanging around the house!!) We made a few different kind of iced teas and lemonade. No one missed the soda, junky chips, etc....or if theydid they didn't anything - haha!

[greenmom4]

Here are a couple of ideas:

http://www.thenourishinggourmet.com/...y-vanilla.html

http://www.thenourishinggourmet.com/...e-ganache.html

[Laniemama]

Cream cheese and maple syrup make a great frosting! I also like doing a lot of salads for parties, like potato salad, bean "dip" salad and homemade tortilla chips (make ahead). Also fruit salad, cobb salad and homemade dressing, and meat balls in the crock pot. HTH!

[mamaspirit]

We just had a bday for my oldest and I used whipped egg yolks for the frosting. I added a tiny bit of honey and some cooked blended strawberries. It was delicious, and I had a lot of comments on how good it was. Although a few people were kind of wide eyed about the raw egg yolk...