Category is: Big Kid Birthday Party

From a boozy pink lemonade to bitter greens with Dorito chip croutons, this dinner party menu features grown-up bites tinged with sweet nostalgia.

After a brief hiatus, Hardcore Supper Club is back! 🥳 What I found with the initial launch of HSC was, aside from it being an unimaginable amount of work, it also ignored something I truly believe: simple food can be fancy food. So instead of delivering one ambitious recipe every week, I decided to put the “supper” into Hardcore Supper Club and present you with a weekly dinner party menu that centres around a particular theme. This week, we’re taking the Strawberry Rhubarb Hard Lemonade from last week and building a Big Kid Birthday Party menu around it. And no, it’s not my birthday, though I am a big kid. My birthday is in December, but if it were in the summer, it would look something like this.

This menu is full of grown-up bites tinged with nostalgia. As I mentioned, the party kicks off with a glass of Strawberry Rhubarb Hard Lemonade. The starter is burrata dressed up to give you mozzarella stick vibes without the frying. The main event is a pillowy focaccia decked out with everything you would find on a deluxe pizza, with spicy marinara on the side for dipping. And speaking of the side, we have a Sweet Corn Cool Ranch Side Salad complete with Cool Ranch Dorito croutons. The festivities wind down with a pretty-in-pink Coconut Funfetti Cake slathered with a Strawberry Buttermilk Frosting encrusted with sweet and chewy coconut flakes.

The PDF at the bottom of this article has all the recipes and a handy three-day schedule designed to help you keep your party prep on track. While none of the recipes included in this booklet are challenging to pull off, they can be a lot when stacked on top of each other. The key to success here is breaking the menu down into an hour or so of light work in the days leading up to the party. In this case, you can make this feast over 3 days. Naturally, on the day of the party, you will have a little more to do. But the vast majority of the meal will be completed and ready before the first guest arrives. This menu can feed anywhere from 4 people with ample leftovers to 8 people and scant leftovers.

Strawberry Rhubarb Hard Lemonade

I won’t go into too much detail about the Strawberry Rhubarb Hard Lemonade because I wrote a whole dang post about it. You can find it here. The recipe is free and very worth your while. This lemonade could find its way onto every summer menu. But I love it here because growing up, from-concentrate pink lemonade was peak beverage excellence to me. And I also have very clear memories of coveting the adults’ Mike’s Hard Lemonades, dreaming of being the cool, confident adult who would crack one on a sunny afternoon. Fast forward to today, and I wouldn’t touch the stuff with a 10-foot pole. But this Strawberry Rhubarb Hard Lemonade? Well, it’s hard to keep me away.

I mentioned this in the actual lemonade post, but I will mention it once more here. This lemonade doesn’t have to be hard. You can omit the vodka and have a perfectly sipable mocktail instead. And if your guest list is a mix of sober and non-sober folks, you can simply add a shot or two of vodka to the glass of anyone who wants a little buzz and leave the pitcher itself virgin.

Mozza Stick Burrata

The name says it all! I know very few people who grew up in the 90s and 2000s who don’t have an ardent love for mozzarella sticks. They were the knee-jerk appetizer order for an entire generation. Here I chose to give the deep fryer a rest and take the elements of the classic and apply it to the of-the-moment sophistication of a ball of burrata.

Most of the components of this dish can be made well in advance. We have the Spicy Marinara, which can be made up to three days in advance. It also doubles as a dip for the focaccia. And we have the homemade seasoned breadcrumbs, which keep so well, they are virtually indestructible. The only thing you have to do on the actual day is put the plates together. Try to do this at the last possible moment because burrata's moisture is the breadcrumbs’ sworn enemy.

The burrata you see in the photos are actually burratinas. They are essentially pint-sized versions of full-size burrata balls. I like them in a dinner party setting because you can have 2-3 of them and place them strategically around the table, so no one has to reach if they want another piece. If you can’t find burratinas (I found mine at Eataly), don’t sweat it. Use a regular ol’ ball of burrata, just make sure it continues to circulate.

Sweet Corn Cool Ranch Salad

This Sweet Corn Cool Ranch Salad was born because I wanted to include a nod to the obligatory giant chip bowl that was present at every birthday party I attended in my youth. But I also didn’t just want to plunk a bowl of chips into the middle of this menu. So the solution was simple: make the chips the croutons for the side salad. This is a big kid birthday party after all, we may be young at heart, but veggies are a must for us geriatric children.

I had a lot of favourite chips in my youth. Frankly, I still do. So I was a little unsure of what snack to highlight. I didn’t want anything too sophisticated, like truffle chips, because that would corrupt the premise of a big kid birthday. I was also wrestling with what salad dressing to use. My current favourite is my from-scratch Caesar dressing - raw egg and all. But I know that would wig out my 8-year-old self, so I nixed that idea. What did my 8-year-old self like? Well, she was a ranch girl. And when I decided to go with ranch, there was only one chip to choose: Cool Ranch Doritos. The superior Dorito in every way - it’s just a fact.

Now, just because we broke out the ranch and crushed a ton of Doritos on top doesn’t mean this salad is without its nods to adulthood. The greens include frisée, a member of the chicory family that is prized for its bitterness. I love it especially when paired with tamer crisp gem lettuce leaves. And the grilled corn is dressed in an umami-rich miso butter. Not something I would’ve had at a 90s bowling party, but very welcome here.

Salami Deluxe Focaccia

What’s a birthday without pizza? Well, hopefully it’s still a birthday because this isn’t exactly pizza. This pillowy focaccia features all the toppings you would find on a deluxe pizza delivered to your door in 30 minutes or less. I made a point of keeping the toppings fairly pedestrian in order to capture the pizza chain experience. But you could go far more gourmet if you wanted to.

Feel free to play with the toppings. You could sauté the mushrooms and peppers first, or you could exchange the fresh tomato wedges for the sun-dried tomatoes. Basically, everything you put on a pizza is fair game for this focaccia. But word to the wise, if you’re keen to add Parmigiano Reggiano, sprinkle it over the focaccia the instant you take it out of the oven. If you put it on before the dough hits the oven, it will just dry out and burn.

Press the toppings into the rising dough an hour before baking. This will give the dough some time to envelop them. There is nothing more satisfying than tearing your way through fluffy bread and finding a deposit of gooey mozzarella cheese. If possible, try to locate a stick of hot salami (I also got this at Eataly) so you can slice it yourself. Sliced salami is generally pretty thin and won’t hold up too well in a hot oven for nearly 30 minutes. You want slices of salami that are at least a quarter-inch thick.

Coconut Funfetti Cake with Strawberry Buttermilk Frosting

And finally, we have this pink stunner. When I was growing up, I considered Betty Crocker’s Rainbow Bit cake to be an elite dessert. I haven’t had it in a while, but I’m sure it still slaps. This Coconut Funfetti Cake is a loving homage to the box mix. It features a white cake base flecked with unsweetened coconut and bright red jimmies.

I brought a little extra sophistication to the dessert by enveloping the cake in a Strawberry Buttermilk Frosting. The frosting is a simple buttercream flavored with freeze-dried strawberries and a splash of buttermilk for a little extra tang. My sweet tooth isn’t what it used to be, so I appreciate a little tartness to cut the sweet. And speaking of cutting the sweet, I opted for a single-layer cake so I could use less frosting. Not trying to be a party pooper, I’m just not the biggest frosting fan. But if you’re looking to make a more traditional layer cake, the recipe below will give you 2 8” cake layers or 3 6” cake layers. If you decide to go this route, make sure you double or even triple the frosting recipe to ensure you have enough to cover the space between the layers.