The most important date for every person is his birthday. Kids with special impatience look forward to the next holiday, when they give presents, guests and friends come, mom prepares delicious treats. A child’s birthday for parents is a very troublesome and exciting event, because all the mothers and fathers want to not only please their child with various delicacies, but also surprise him with the original menu, bright dishes and a festive atmosphere.
Decide on a place for a holiday
Before you think about the menu, you need to think through an action plan. There are a lot of options for organizing a children's celebration, and each format requires a different budget.
The most popular option for organizing a holiday is a birthday at home. Celebrating the celebration in the apartment, it is possible to decorate the room in advance. Children love themed holidays, parties. In this case, you need to design a room in the style of your favorite birthday cartoon and prepare holiday paraphernalia for guests.
Some people prefer to have birthday parties in nature. To organize a festive picnic, you will have to think over many details, take care of the tablecloth, disposable tableware, napkins, folding furniture, etc. in advance.
Another great choice is a buffet table for children. Here, the space for imagination is almost limitless. The main part of the buffet table consists of snacks, sandwiches, canapes, sweets, fruits. This format attracts kids with a bright and colorful design, simple presentation. The buffet table does not oblige to take seats - for active and restless kids, a holiday is better and difficult to come up with.
We plan a budget
Treats for a child’s birthday will cost as much as you are willing to pay for them. Holding any holiday is always reflected in the thickness of the family wallet. To save money, a celebration is organized at home. To do this, it is advisable to include more salads and snacks from affordable and inexpensive products in the menu, without exotic and delicacies.
When organizing a children's holiday, it is important to understand that the atmosphere of fun and joy is more important to children than salads in plates. In order for a birthday to be remembered for a birthday person and his invited friends for a long time, you need to focus on three points:
- room design;
- entertainment and games;
- sweet table (cake and desserts).
We compose the main menu
So, what delicious can you cook for a child’s birthday? Treats can be various: sweets, fruits, sweets, desserts ... All these kids are madly in love, but, making up the menu, it is important to consider that children should not be fed with any products.
Going to the store for products for a children's feast, you need to think through everything to the smallest detail. You can not discount the probability of an allergic reaction in invited children. To avoid unforeseen consequences and difficulties, it is advisable to find out in advance from parents about the restrictions in the diet of their children. So it will be possible to plan in advance the optimal menu and the amount of food.
Among the treats for a child’s birthday, there should not be too hot, hot, smoked, or pickled dishes. Even if such products are fresh, they can cause stomach pain in children, upset stools. However, this does not mean that you need to cook everyday, familiar dishes for everyone. Soup is not the best culinary idea for a children's holiday. It is better to give preference to a delicious hot dish, choosing meat by age. Usually children are delighted with chicken and turkey. Children hardly appreciate a chop or goulash. An excellent alternative would be light meatballs, meatballs, barbecue, baked in the oven.
It is worth to refuse fish dishes at a children's holiday table. This is a rather dangerous product for babies, because children can choke on small bones. In addition, fish dishes have a specific aroma and not all kids are delighted with it.
Salads for children should be neutral. The variety of ingredients kids can not appreciate. It is better to choose dishes that include no more than 2-3 components. Let's say a salad of Beijing cabbage, carrots and sweet corn. Low-fat tender cottage cheese and fruits are the perfect combination for a snack with which you can start a children's feast. Caution and prudence should be exercised when choosing dressing and sauce. Since children often have intolerance to dairy products, there should be salads on the table with different options for dressing - with vegetable oil, sour cream, yogurt. But mayonnaise is better not to use.
Drinks for a child’s birthday are no less important than main dishes. Children love sweet soda, but still it is better to opt for natural homemade fruit drinks, jelly, stewed berries and fruits. By the way, fruit drinks can be diluted with mineral water, garnished with a slice of citrus, a cocktail umbrella or a straw.
Sweet table: the main nuances
The choice of desserts cannot be overlooked. The table of sweets for the child’s birthday, as already mentioned, is one of the main elements of the holiday. Despite the fact that today in shops you can buy a variety of options for ready-made confectionery, for a children's holiday it is better to bake a cake yourself. So you can be calm, because you will be confident in the expiration date, and in the composition of your creation. You can buy cakes and children's desserts for children over five years of age, but only if you do not doubt the quality of the products you purchase. To dispel doubts, first read customer reviews.
If the birthday boy is allergic to egg yolk or milk, mom will be able to choose any other suitable recipe. Home cooking leaves the opportunity to choose an original decoration to your taste. Fruits for the child’s birthday must be present on the table, but it is advisable to choose fruits without small stones.
Menu for a birthday boy in 1-2 years
At this age, serious nutritional restrictions apply for children. You can only serve dishes that are prepared from neutral foods familiar to the kids. Any potential allergens should be banned. These include seafood, honey, peanuts, strawberries, chocolate, various spices, etc.
The festive table does not need to be reloaded with salads and heavy meat dishes. Children of this age will prefer miniature sandwiches from tartlets or crackers with chicken pate, light chicken meatballs and mashed potatoes. Of the drinks, apple compote or diluted juice are perfect.
For kids at this age, instead of a cake with a fat cream, it is better to choose a healthy and light dessert that will be quickly absorbed and will not cause digestive problems. It can be a sweet souffle, creamy jelly or sweets from a baby formula. There are a lot of recipes for making dessert from "Baby" or "Baby". Such sweets are completely safe, because they can treat the youngest guests. Sweets made from infant formula, unlike regular chocolates, do not contain preservatives, chemical additives, flavors or flavor enhancers.
What to cook for a child in 3-4 years
At this age, babies become more demanding. For guests of this age group, you need to prepare more treats for your birthday at home. Children especially love snacks, so you can start with basic sandwiches. For example, canapes with tomatoes and lean meat, skewers with grapes and cheese. So that the appetizers have an attractive appetizing appearance, they can be decorated with half a boiled egg, making a boat, or cherry tomato, turning a sandwich into a ladybug or a bright mushroom. A variety of components and culinary decor will not leave indifferent guests.
For hot dishes, turkey or chicken is more suitable. And it is better to pay attention to the serving of portions. For example, kebabs baked in sour cream sauce can be decorated with slices of pineapple or apple. In the summer season, you must definitely serve a salad of fresh vegetables seasoned with vegetable oil for a meat dish.
Of all the sweets for a birthday, a child who is three or four years old will look forward to a cake. Returning to the topic of home cooking, it is worth noting that homemade confectionery products usually do not turn out as bright and colorful as factory ones. In the pastry shop you can order a cake with any figures and images of cartoon characters. The main thing is that the cream in the cake is airy and not greasy (curd, yogurt, sour cream).
Festive table on the birthday of a child aged 5-7
At this age, children can eat everything, which means that the list of allowed dishes and ingredients is becoming much wider. To the festive table you can serve several vegetable salads of vegetables and boiled chicken, turkey. Canapes with fruits, cream cheese, vegetables, salted salmon, and salmon are perfect as an appetizer.
For hotter things, children are better prepared to cook beef meat rolls with mushrooms or prunes, and for a side dish - rustic potatoes baked in the oven, croquettes or multi-colored mashed potatoes, which in fact is easy to prepare. The recipe is simple: you need to divide the mashed potatoes into three parts, add juice from boiled beets to one of them, spinach juice to the other, and leave the third as it is. You can nicely arrange a serving on a plate with cherry tomatoes, dill branches, cranberries, etc. None of the children will remain indifferent to such a side dish.
Sweet treats for a child’s birthday should also be considered in advance. The most commonplace option is a beautiful cream cake. If you want something more dietetic, you can cook a honey cake for a child. At the birthday party, even those children who suffer from diabetes or obesity will be able to eat it. Honey, unlike beet or cane sugar, contains more fructose than sucrose, so less insulin is required to absorb it. You can also serve pudding, fruit jelly, milk soufflé with vanilla and other options for a light children's dessert.
Birthday for schoolchildren
When organizing a holiday for a child over seven years old, you must always consult with him yourself. Let the birthday man tell you what story for the party he likes. As for the holiday menu, its basis should be a variety of salads and snacks. A hot dish can be baked veal medallions with a vegetable side dish, rice or spaghetti with homemade fragrant sauce.
Modern students are crazy about pizza, burgers, hot dogs, a variety of nuggets and other fast food, which can be easily cooked at home. For example, pizza with a variety of filling options will appeal to all guests. For decoration, you can use olives, herbs, cherry tomatoes.
For dessert, of course, you can bake or buy a cake. The second option is ice cream with fruits and sweets. For a child’s birthday, a sweet table can be supplemented with a variety of cakes, eclairs, cookies, chocolate.
How to celebrate a holiday in kindergarten?
When a child's birthday comes, you have to think about what to bring treats to the kindergarten. A child’s birthday at home will be significantly different from a festive event in a preschool. The choice of refreshments for preschoolers is an extremely sensitive issue, therefore, its solution must be approached responsibly.
For example, cakes cannot be brought to kindergarten. All products with cream are prohibited, so the cake option can be immediately thrown aside. In some kindergartens, the administration also prohibits bringing home-made cakes, stewed fruit, and juices. Therefore, when planning a celebration, you must first consult with the teacher and find out how you can treat children and what not.
The group may include allergy sufferers and children suffering from diseases of the digestive system. In addition, at the age of 5-6 years, children do not yet know how to brush their teeth qualitatively, so you need to select sweets based on their safety for the teeth. As a treat you can not use chocolates, caramel, candy, cookies with jam, chewing gums.
In kindergarten, you can give children the following types of sweets:
- cookies marked on the package "from 5 months";
- biscuit cookies, “Baked milk”, “Anniversary”;
- bagels and crackers;
- muesli bars
- pitted fruits and dried fruits;
- hematogen.
You can not worry about drinks: in the kitchen of this preschool institution there is always compote, kissel, tea. A limited list of sweets that can be treated to kids in kindergarten - this is one of the safety measures for children's health, and it can not be ignored.
How to treat classmates?
School is the place with which memories of the childhood of each of us are connected. She occupies an important place in the lives of children, so you can not forget about the classmates of her child on her birthday. Most children bring refreshments to school - everyone knows about this tradition. To effectively and originally celebrate a holiday in the classroom, you can use one of the proposed ideas for serving and decorating sweets.
To make the treat not only tasty, but also beautiful, it is not enough just to hand out a few sweets into your hands. It's boring and not festive at all. But if you pack these sweets (“Rot Front”, “Accond”, “Babaevskys”, “Red October”, “Yashkino”, “Kommunarka”, etc.), for example, you can surprise all the birthday boy’s friends. It is not difficult to make such a composition:
- Pour dragees into ready-made waffle cones or put different sweets, marmalade, gelatins, etc.
- On top of the horn put marshmallows and “glue” it to the wafer with icing sugar.
- Place junction with coconut chips or multi-colored sprinkles for Easter cakes.
- Ready food to pack in a festive cellophane with a ribbon.
Instead of waffle cones, you can use transparent plastic cups, jars that are easy to decorate or trimmed with cotton candy.
Secrets of the culinary decor for a child's birthday
Making a children's holiday table is an important condition that cannot be ignored if you want the child to remember the celebration for a long time. Both boys and girls are fond of cartoons, series, movies, they have their idols.
For example, a child is crazy about the cartoon about Spider-Man. What can be done in this case? For example, decorate snacks with long thin strips of cheese, simulating a web. On sandwiches, olives resembling spiders will look good. Girls usually like dishes decorated in the form of animals, flowers, fruits (for example, salad “Hedgehog”, “Turtle”, “Pineapple”). Such dishes look delicious on the table and cause delight in children.
Various canapes made of fruits and vegetables are a great way to decorate the festive table and add bright colors. To do this, you need multi-colored skewers, colored plates and canapes. The main principle is the harmonious combination of several colors. The brighter the plate, the more delicious all the dishes on the table will look.
You can nicely decorate the hot with figures carved from vegetables. It can be hares, kittens, dogs from carrots or cucumbers. To get a clearer shape of the figures, you need to choose dense and sluggish fruits.
You can decorate desserts with anything - fruits, berries, dragees, whipped cream and chocolates. The Rot Front, for example, produces some of the most delicious Russian bars with chocolate cream flavor. Composed of pralines, grated peanuts and crushed crushed waffles. Sweets are sweet, but not at all cloying, for which adults and children love them.
Tips on the eve of the children's holiday
First of all, you need to carefully plan the menu in advance. Sometimes preparing for a birthday takes several weeks. This will allow you to choose dishes to the table without haste and fuss, stock up on all the necessary ingredients and think over the details of the design of the room, serving. Do not focus on complex multi-component dishes. The menu should be based on familiar products, but cooked in an unusual way (for example, chicken rolls, barbecue, potato croquettes, etc.).
Decoration of dishes should not go against the theme of the holiday. Posters and posters with congratulations for the birthday party can be hung on the curtains and walls, the table can be covered with a multi-colored juicy tablecloth. It is desirable that its material lends itself to easy cleaning, since children at the table often knock over plates and spill drinks. If there will be very young children among the guests, you should choose themed napkins for tying around the neck and protecting the holiday dress from random spots.
For decor, you can choose vegetables and fruits of different colors. The main thing is to arrange the table in colorful and vibrant colors. At the same time, there is no need to overload the feast with an abundance of various dishes - this is useless for children.
All dishes on the table must be fresh and of high quality. The use of freezing and semi-finished products should be avoided, preference should be given to chilled products, especially meat. It is better to refuse and protect from unforeseen situations not only your child, but also the kids invited to the holiday from food that can provoke an allergy.
If you do not cook confectionery yourself, then you need to buy them only in trusted places. When preparing a dessert for children, try not to use margarine and put a minimum of butter. More high-calorie sweets can lead to a malfunction of the gastrointestinal tract.
If there are no restrictions on dairy products, then milkshakes will be an excellent option for kids. As topping, you can use strawberry, peach or banana puree. For children, a fruit cocktail can be diluted with sparkling water. You can also offer kids homemade lemonade. Regardless of the time of year, drinks should not be too cold.
If the holiday will be held at home, you will have to cook everything on the eve of the celebration. If you start cooking even earlier, by the birthday the dishes will become stale and may deteriorate. It should be borne in mind that cold snacks are considered suitable for use within 12 hours from the date of preparation. Salads seasoned with yogurt or sour cream have a shelf life of no more than 8 hours.
Children need to put a fruit plate on the table. Most children simply love fruits, so they can be cut nicely - then a fruit plate will not only be useful, but also decorate the holiday table.
Birthday is a favorite celebration for every child. All children are looking forward to the holiday. A well-organized feast will be the best addition to gifts, will cause sincere joy and fun.