Foods to serve at a Baby Shower

Published June 13, 2012

So you’ve decided when and where you plan to have your baby shower. Now, the next step is creating the menu but where do you start?

Lucky for you, I’ve put together the essentials of a baby shower to help make your party a success.

In the past I covered decorations, games and party favors. As well as a full baby shower planning guide to help make the steps a little easier on you.

Now lets move onto the food:

Finger Foods

A baby shower menu certainly helps make the party a memorable one. The assortment of food you choose and its presentation shows how much effort you put into planning the baby shower.

If you’re hosting the shower at a restaurant or are catering the event, the restaurant or caterer will help you choose appetizers and entrées appropriate to the theme and the time of the day that the shower begins. If you’re hosting the baby shower at a home, I have assembled some helpful tips for easy finger foods and beverages.

Fresh Fruit
Fruit is an easy food to serve that everyone likes as an appetizer, with the meal or even with dessert. Buy and cut your favorite fruits up into squares or buy fruit salad from your local grocery store to save you some work. Serve cubed in a large bowl or mix fruits on skewers and serve on a platter.

Vegetables
Vegetables are another easy food to serve as appetizers or with the baby shower meal. As with fruit, you can cut up celery, broccoli, cauliflower, baby carrots, and other favorites or you can find vegetable trays at the market. Serve chilled with ranch dressing or make your own dips to impress your guests.

Finger Sandwiches
Cucumber sandwiches are the baby shower #1 favorite sandwich because they’re frequently served at showers with an Afternoon Tea theme. You have some flexibility with the type of sandwich you serve; just make sure to cut the sandwiches into dainty portions.

Other easy finger foods include:

Chips and Dips – Serve spinach dip, salsa, guacamole, onion dip, or hot artichoke dip with tortilla chips or pita bread cut into small triangles.

Cheese and Crackers – Serve a variety of crackers along with two or more cheeses.

Chicken (Teriyaki or Sate) – Serve on skewers with teriyaki or peanut sauce.

Baby Shrimp – Need I say more? Serve with cocktail sauce.

Chicken Wings – Especially popular with the men at couples’ showers, served with ranch dressing.

Meat Balls – Another strong performer, especially at couples’ showers, make sure to serve the small variety.

Mini Pizzas – Everyone loves pizza, so when they’re small enough to pop in your mouth, they’ll go fast.

Baby Shower Drinks

Coffee, tea, punch and soda are all great baby shower beverages. If the mommy-to-be doesn’t mind, you could also serve wine or other alcoholic drinks. Make sure to have cream, and sugar. As well as the pink and blue sweeteners for coffee drinkers. Brew a pot of tea, or offer hot water and an assortment of tea bags — it’s a nice touch.

If you’re serving soda, make sure you have regular and diet choices. And for the punch, there are so many recipes to choose from. Go with a more traditional fruit punch or serve pink lemonade, raspberry-lemonade, or mint julep. Toss in a few scoops of vanilla ice cream, some small chunks of fresh fruit and a few rubber duckies for a special effect.

Fun Drink Presentation

Serve drinks in baby bottles – Remove the nipples from the bottles and insert fun, colorful straws and fun cocktail umbrellas. After the shower the bottles (along with the nipples) can be given to the mommy-to-be to use (if she chooses).

HAVE ANY OTHER BABY SHOWER FOOD OR TIPS YOU CAN OFFER OTHER READERS?
List them below…

Dee