A birthday party

We recently had an 18th birthday at our house & I had great fun preparing the food. We started off with those old favourites, cheesy feet & hands. These are the ones using the cheese straw recipe & cutting into various shapes. Stars are nice if you don't fancy the feet. Or any shape you happen to have in your cupboard.

We had a selection of vegetables & crisps with the classic reduced cream dips and crostini with an avocado & pea spread. To make this, mix a ripe avocado, a cup or so of frozen peas - at least partially thawed - 1 clove garlic, a pinch of salt and 2 tbsp lime juice in your blender until smooth. Spread on crostini. It sounds odd but is delicious & is beautifully green. It won't discolour over the evening as traditional guacamole will.

For supper, I served a glazed ham with bread rolls. This was a great success & I recommend it for a party. You can glaze the ham the night before & if this was for more discerning guests you could include trimmings to go in the rolls. I also did mini meatballs on skewers with cherry tomatoes. I usually use lamb mince but on this occasion I used beef. Mix the mince with oregano, cumin, finely chopped fresh chilli & rosemary and bind with an egg yolk. Roll into small meatballs & fan grill 0n 180 about 15 minutes. Test one to see that they are cooked. I prepare these the night before & refrigerate on a large plate with cling film underneath & between the layers.

For sweets, we had vegan Margarita cupcakes & chocolate gluten-free cupcakes courtesy of Harriet. I made the best lamingtons I've ever made. I think the trick was the consistency of the chocolate dip. It was thin enough to hold to the sponge without being gluggy. I use shredded rather than dessicated coconut. The birthday girl prepared a very symmetrical platter of fruit.

The piece de resistance was the cake. The idea behind this was a bit convoluted & related to the TV series Chuck. You may get this if you have teenagers. Otherwise you only need to know that the cake was in the shape of a foot long chicken teriyaki subway sandwich. I made a triple recipe Madeira cake. It needed a very large cake tin! I cut the cake into three foot-long slabs resembling rolls. I then cut each roll in half - like a bread roll. I divided a block of royal icing into four. One section was coloured green then rolled out & cut into lettuce shapes & laid along the base of the rolls. Next was the tomatoes, coloured a reddy orange & cut into rounds. I then scored them to resemble the skin & membranes & pressed a fer poppy seeds into the centre. Next came slabs of yellow icing for the cheese. The chicken I shaped as shredded chicken & coloured very lightly. Onto this I dollopped maple syrup that had been thickened with a little muscovado sugar & a drop of red colouring for the teriyaki sauce. Then on went the tops of the rolls which I brushed with a sugar syrup & ground some chocolate sugar sprinkles I had in the cupboard to resemble mixed grain. When we brought it out there were some in the room who thought the birthday girl was being presented with sandwiches. What do you think?