Fruit Salad Party

My daughter recently turned 5 and she had it in mind that she was going to have a 'Strawberry Shortcake' party. However, she has quite a few friends who are little boys and I was keen for her to do something that was a bit more inclusive. Her little sister loves Bananas in Pyjamas so, after some negotiation, we decided on a 'Fruit Salad' party. The party was a mid-January event so there was loads of delicious, colourful fruit around and we were really able to go crazy with the theme. 

Here are some of the ideas that we used in our party: 
 

Food and drink for a fruit salad party

 
Of course, the centre piece of our table was an enormous platter of fruit. We piled a plate high with fruit and gave the children a little noodle box each and let them choose the fruit that they wanted. Although we didn't end up doing it, we had thought that the children could decorate their noodle boxes with their favourite fruit. We also found some cute little cocktail sticks and the children used these to eat their fruit salad. 

Drink

Just Juice now makes juice with stevia and it's not as sweet as their standard juice. It comes in a range of fab flavours like Strawberry and Kiwifruit and Pear and Apple. We chose three flavours and put them in clear jugs to show off the colours - just like a juice rainbow! You could also pop fruit into the juice to add a bit more colour. 

The cake

As we started off with the Strawberry Shortcake idea, I decided to make my daughter a strawberry cake. I'm not really a cake decorator but figured I could make something pretty!  

I ended up making a simple sponge cake and split the batter in two then coloured one half pink before cooking it. Once the sponge was ready to decorate, I used jam and cream in the middle. The real gem that I have recently discovered is freeze dried, powered fruit from Fresh-As. It's not cheap but a little goes a long way. I bought a sachet of strawberry freeze dried fruit and mixed some into the cream. Not only did it give the cream an AMAZING strawberry flavour, it also turned it a gorgeous pink colour. 

To decorate the top of the cake, I simply smothered it with pink cream and then sprinkled a layer of powdered strawberry and the used some of these Glitter Princess Natural Sprinkles from Cake Stuff, which are free from artificial colours, flavours, sweeteners, hydrogenated fat and preservatives. Finally, a ring of lovely strawberries around the edge finished it off. It was super-easy, looked amazing and the kids loved it. 

Fruit Salad party games 

We varied some well-known games with a fruit theme - here are some of the ideas we had: 

• Fruit salad game
• Pin the hats of the bananas or put the fruit in a bowl (variations on Pin the Tail on the Donkey) 
• Fruit scavenger hunt 
• Pass the fruit bowl (pass the parcel) 
• Fruit pinata 

We also had some karaoke at the end of the party where we, of course, sang: "Fruit salad, yummy, yummy!" 

So there you go - some of the ideas we used for our Fruit Salad party. It worked for both boys and girls and it was nice to make the focus of the food be wonderful, fresh, healthy fruit. I was really pleased with how everything turned out and my daughter had a ball. Wins all around! 

Rochelle Gribble is the editor of www.babybites.co.nz and also www.kiwifamilies.co.nz. She both loved and fears organising parties for her three small people but the smile on their faces makes it all worthwhile. 


 

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