Star Wars: The Force Awakens

I have been waiting for years to do a Star Wars movie premier party, and the time finally arrived!!

Favors:  I had bought a really cute set of Star Wars cookie cutters from Hot Topic on black Friday and these were a lot of fun to make the classic Cinnamon Ornaments with.  I used the Imperial Sugar recipe and would recommend to  keep them thick and cook them longer as well as allow to airdry over night.

Activities: Since it is near Christmas, the activities were winter and Christmas oriented.

Build a Droid:  Instead of building gingerbread houses, we built droids using marshmallows and toothpicks and royal icing as the base and various candies (gum drops, licorice, etc) to decorate and personalize your droids. We had a contest and passed out Star Wars $1 merchandise prizes.

Star Wars Snowflakes:  Anthony Herrara Designs is the king of all cool geeky snowflake patterns and you can get them for FREE on his website.  I printed several options out and had a station with a large cutting mat, multiple pairs of scissors, and some exacto knives available.

White Elephant:  Over the past few months as $1-3 items have popped up in Target Dollar Spot, I have snagged them to have plenty of wrapped gift options for a "Left-Right" white elephant gift exchange game.  Unfortunately there are no Star Wars version of the story, although if you are creative you could write one about the Dark or Light side of the Force. 

Star Wars Trivia: I passed out this difficult trivia quiz I found via pinterest on See Mom Click.

Photos:  I always like to have a photo wall with some props.  It is a fun way to loosen people up, get a photo of everyone in attendance, and it is easy entertainment.  I was lazy and rather than make a cute starry night or other appropriate Star Wars background, I just used a Force Awakens table cloth.  I bought a lot of the masks on clearance after Halloween, and others I have found thrifting over the years.  I added a title overlay when I edited the pictures later and sent them to each guest. 

Party Food:

Drinks:  I had Yoda's Sodas representing the light side (Cream Soda) and the Dark side (Rootbeer) of the force and water.  I wanted to serve Hoth (hot) chocolate but never got around to it.

BB-8 Balls: Clementine's are plentiful this time of year and the new cute little droid BB-8 fits right in.

Jar Jar Links:  Just did the crockpot lil smokies and BBQ sauce. 

Taun-Taun Sliders: I have heard people rave about these ham and swiss sliders for years and since I was keeping the meal simple, this was a perfect time to use them.

Hawaiian Ham and Cheese Rolls

1 stick butter

2 Tbsp Dijon Mustard

2 tsp Worcestershire Sauce

1 Tbsp Brown Sugar

1 Tbsp Poppy seeds

1 Tbsp dried diced onion or 1/2 tsp onion powder

18-24 Hawaiian Rolls (must be the King Hawaiian brand)

1-2 (16oz) packages of sliced deli ham

8oz thin sliced Swiss Cheese

1.  Melt butter, mix in mustard, Worcestershire sauce, brown sugar, poppy seed, onion

2.  Slice roll and place 1 piece of ham in each.

3.  Cut Swiss cheese slices into quarters and top ham with a slice of cheese.

4.  Place sandwiches onto a baking sheet and preheat oven to 350 degrees.

5.  Brush rolls with butter and seasoning mixture liberally.

6.  Bake for 20 minutes.

Bantha Bites: For these I created meatball sliders. 

Meatball Sliders

24 frozen or homemade meatballs

24 oz jar of spaghetti sauce (I use Prego Fresh Mushroom)

12 oz of Mozerella (block to slice)

24 rolls

1.  Heat up sauce and meatballs in a saucepan (10-20 minutes)

2.  Slice Rolls and cheese. Lay out rolls on sheet pan.

3. Open rolls and place a slice of cheese on each.

4.  Spoon sauce and a meatball on each roll and top with other side of roll (may have to squish down to keep in place).

5.  Bake for 5 minutes at 350 degrees.

Endor Salad:  Any fresh green salad works for this.

Cloud City Cookies:  I made Mexican Wedding cookies for this.

Mexican Wedding Cookies

recipe from Kraft Foods.

1 cup butter, softened

1/2 cup powdered sugar

1 tsp vanilla

2 cups flour

1 cup finely chopped pecans

additional powdered sugar for rolling

1.  Beat together butter, sugar, and vanilla until fluffy. 

2.  Slowly mix in flour.

3.  Stir in pecans

4.  Preheat oven to 350 degrees.

5.  Roll cookies into 1 inch balls.

6.  Bake for 14 minutes, cool for 5 minutes.

7.  Roll into powdered sugar and allow to cool completely.

Wookie and Friends Gingerbread cookies:  I bought awesome gingerbread Star Wars cookie cutters from Think Geek.  I made chocolate gingerbread for fun.

May the 4th be with you.

Today is Star Wars Day and to celebrate I made a treat out of my new Intergalactic Ice cream treats book:

I made Tatooine Terrine.  It is smooth, and rich, a chocolate-peanut butter delight.  I used what I had on hand so it is a little different from the recipe in the book, but very close.

2 cup chocolate chips (I used 1 cup milk chocolate and 1 cup semi-sweet
1 cup creamy peanut butter (although I think next time I will use chunky for the added texture)
1 cup heavy cream
1 tsp vanilla
1/4 cup white sugar
chopped nuts (The actual recipe calls for peanuts but I only had cashews on hand)

You can melt the chocolate over a double boiler but I used the simple microwave method where you melt in a microwave safe bowl for 1 minute, stir, and then 30 seconds, stir, 30 seconds, stir...until smooth.  Stir in peanut butter and vanilla.  Allow to cool as you whip the heavy cream until it starts to peak as whipping cream.  Add in the sugar as you whip, until stiff peaks form.  Stir into chocolate mixture.  Line a loaf pan with plastic wrap for easy removal.  Layer chopped nuts on the bottom of pan.  Pour chocolate mixture over nuts and smooth out.  Sprinkle with more nuts on top.  Over top with plastic wrap and freeze for at least an hour.  Slice and serve.

 

 

For Chewbacca Chicken Fingers or Death Star Chocolate Cake, check out this post.

 

For other Star Wars party ideas check out my Star Wars label.

Star Wars birthday party

My cousin held a Star Wars birthday party for their kids and it was a lot of fun!  There was pod racing, light saber making, and lots of fun food...

pod racing by cutting the bottom our of boxes and having 2 small kids or 1 adult per box.

Ewok Endor Brownie bites.  Just use little teddy grahams to look like Ewoks.

Death Star cake

Yoda apple (super ghetto but cute) with intergalactic dip (2 packages cream cheese, 3/4 cup brown sugar, 1 cup heath bar bits)

Star Wars Birthday Party

For my sister's party we had a Star Wars birthday party. It was pretty easy...I just followed many ideas I had seen and shared on a previous post.

-Made a pinata deathstar out of a soccerball pinata.

-Bought a roll of starwars wrapping paper to create a background for taking pictures with my yoda and darth vader masks and light sabers.

-Light saber cupcakes as well as a darthvader bobblehead topping a grey round "deathstar" cake.

-Lots of yummy food...

Yoda Soda (Lime sherbert and Sprite)

Mini Droids (1/3 a hot dog with 1/2 a uncooked pillsbury biscut wrapped around it)

Princess Leia Cinnabons (got lazy here and just bought Pillsbury frozen mini-cinnamon rolls)

Ewok fruit salad (cottage cheese, jello, fruit, and coolwhip) &

Bantha's and Hoth Dip (Fruit and creamcheese/marshmallow creme dip)

Star Wars Rules!

So for the recipe of the month I am choosing "Princess Leia Cinnabons." My family has been on a Star Wars kick lately so I made these cinnamon rolls that are featured in my Star Wars Cookbook. They were pretty dang good!

Princess Leia Cinnabons

1 package active dry yeast (1 Tbsp)

3/4 cup warm water

1/4 cup white sugar

3/4 teaspoon salt

1 egg, room temperature

2 1/2 cups bread flour

1/4 cup butter, softened
1 tablespoon ground cinnamon
1/2 cup brown sugar

1. In a small bowl, dissolve yeast in warm water. Let stand until creamy, about 10 minutes.
2. In a large bowl, combine the yeast mixture with the sugar, salt, egg and 1 cup flour; stir well to combine.

3. Stir in the remaining flour, 1/2 cup at a time, beating well with each addition. When the dough has pulled together, turn it out onto a lightly floured surface and knead until smooth and elastic, about 8 minutes. Cover with a damp cloth and let rest for 10 minutes.
4. Lightly grease an 9X13 inch baking pan. Roll dough out on a lightly floured surface to 1/4 inch thick rectangle. Spread dough with butter and sprinkle with cinnamon and brown sugar. Roll up the dough along the long edge until it forms a roll. Slice the roll into 16 equal size pieces and place them in the pan with the cut side up.
5. Cover pan with plastic wrap and let rise at room temperature until doubled in volume, about 45 minutes.
6. Preheat oven to 400 degrees. Bake rolls until golden brown, about 20 minutes.

7. Frost with cream-cheese frosting.

Cream Cheese Frosting:

1/2 package (4oz) cream cheese, softened
1-2 cups powdered sugar
1 tsp vanilla

mix to desired consitency.



As for a starwars party I thought Make and Take offered a lot of great ideas. I especially loved the light-saber cupcakes, and death star pinata. Not gonna lie, i just may throw a starwars birthday party for myself this year. Who wants to wait to have kids!!

Game that sounds fun:

Release Hans Solo... this comes from a link on the Make and Take page...

"We also played "Release Han Solo". I used two of my son's Han Solo action figures and placed them in plastic rectangular containers. I then filled them with water, just so that Han was covered, and froze them solid. I explained to the kids, that in the movie "The Empire Strikes Back", Han was frozen in carbonite and that we were going to release him from his icy prison! We divided into teams, and the kids formed a bucket brigade line by dunking small buckets (one to each team) into large water-filled buckets (that I had set in the sun to heat up slightly), and passed them down the line and poured them over their frozen Han that was laying on the driveway in front of the last person in line. The first team to release Han won."