EASY PARTY FOOD IDEAS | Holiday Recipes | December 2023

Hey, y'all. Today's video is gonna be all about holiday appetizers with Christmas and New Year's coming up and those being the two biggest occasions where people get together and finger foods are needed. I really wanted to put this video together for you guys. I feel like everyone has their handful of go-to party food recipes. I love trying to add to that list and just finding new ideas and recipes. So for this video, I chose five new-to-me recipes to make and they all turned out really delicious. I feel that they are all worthy of sharing with friends and family for a special occasion. So I do hope that this video is helpful for you if you're looking for some new ideas. First up, I'm gonna be making these club sandwich party rolls. So you'll need one can of pizza crust. I'm going with the Pillsbury Classic Crust and I'm just getting that unfolded and situated onto my large cutting board. I'm just kinda trying to rearrange all of the edges to make sure that they're all somewhat equal, just kinda using my fingertips to press that out so it's more of like a workable surface. I did shred up a block of some sharp cheddar cheese. I'm only gonna be using roughly about a cup of it though and I'm just sprinkling that all over the bottom of the dough making it as equal as possible. You're gonna need some deli turkey, ham, and roast beef. I had never seen that Kentucky Legend brand in deli meat. I found all of that at Save-A-Lot. So I'm just gonna start layering all of that. Over top of the cheese, I ended up doing six slices of each. The recipe did call for five slices but I'm not really sure how that would work but just do whatever feels best to you. I did also fry up six slices of bacon. I did that earlier in the day. That way, when it was time to make these, all I had to do was pull it out and honestly, that was the most time consuming part of this recipe and even that didn't take that long but other than that, everything else went by just like a breeze. So as you can see, I'm just rolling this up using the long end, not the short end and I'm just taking a sharp knife and I ended up slicing that into 12 equal sections. I did pull out my nine by 13 casserole dish and I sprayed it with some nonstick cookin' spray and I'm just getting these laid out. These are very similar to those famous like Hawaiian roll party sandwiches that most people love. It has a really similar taste to it but I really like that this uses pizza crust and it's rolled up like big pinwheels and we also really loved all of the different deli meats that it used, just giving it a really good flavor. So next, we're gonna start on the glaze which is what makes these in my opinion. So to my sauce pan, I'm gonna melt down a stick of butter. I chose to go with salted. I added in two tablespoons of brown sugar, a tablespoon of Worcestershire sauce and a tablespoon of Dijon mustard. I'm just gonna whisk all of that together over a medium high heat until that butter is melted and everything's nice and smooth and as soon as that started to come up to a boil, I cut off the heat and it is done. So you could certainly just pour this straight from the pot into that casserole dish but sometimes I'm bad about doing that like evenly and I wanted to make sure that each roll had a good amount of sauce on it so I'm just going in with a like serving spoon to ladle that all over the top. This is gonna go in the oven at 350 degrees anywhere from 25 to 30 minutes. These had my whole house smelling amazing. We could not wait to dig in. You would think that these would come out soggy but they really don't and I just think that they look really nice. They really are low effort to make. I feel like almost anyone could do it and I just feel like every party needs some type of sandwich. Barbecued meatballs are really common where I live and I've always thought that they're okay, like they're good, but they've honestly just never been my favorite thing until this recipe and it is all in the cooking method so y'all have to stay with me because I swear it is life changing. So to a big sauce pot, I'm adding in just a regular size bottle of barbecue sauce. I'm using the Sweet Baby Ray's spicy one. It's not spicy at all. It's just got a little bit of a tang to it and you'll also need a can of whole berry cranberry sauce. It has to be the whole berry cranberry sauce for this recipe and you're just gonna stir those two things together and have it on about a medium heat and wait for it to come to a simmer. Now I've done a couple variations of these before with like barbecue sauce and grape jelly, chili sauce, but I've never done it with a cranberry sauce and it is such a delicious sauce, such a good combination and cranberries just remind me of like Christmas time anyways, so it's just very fitting. But now that the sauce is bubbling, I went ahead and threw on in that bag of frozen meatballs with my spatula, I'm just stirring it to coat and then I'm gonna get these covered with a lid. I'm gonna turn the heat down to a simmer and I'm just gonna let those cook for about 20 minutes, just pretty much to heat the meatballs through. Then I'm gonna remove the lid and I'm gonna turn the heat back up to about a medium high heat. That way the sauce can really reduce down and it's gonna get really nice and sticky. Now I'm sure that most of y'all who have had these, it is almost always served in a crock pot and that's how I have done it prior and it just gets so watered down that way. Like the sauce just does not cling to the meatballs, it's not very flavorful and it just seems very wasteful like you're pouring out a lot of the sauce. This method right here just changes all of that. These are extremely flavorful and as you can see, the sauce is thick, it's sticking to the meatballs perfectly. I promise you, this cooking method is 100 times better than the crock pot meatballs. If you take away anything from this video, let it be this one. I did transfer those on over to a beautiful serving tray and I included these little snowman toothpicks. I got these at Hobby Lobby a few years ago and I just keep forgetting about them. So not only are they adorable, but they're long so you can stack a few meatballs on there and you cannot tell me that these wouldn't be perfect at any party. Up next, I'm gonna be making some little mini strawberry cheesecakes. These are gonna be such high quality and they are just amazing. So this is an easy recipe, but it is one that takes some preparation. This one definitely took the longest. So I have my oven preheated to 325 degrees and in my food processor, I am just crushing a whole sleeve of graham crackers until it's in fine crumbs. On the stove, I'm gonna melt three tablespoons of butter. I prefer to do it on the stovetop versus the microwave because I just hate when it explodes. Not only does that mess with your measurements, but it's just wasteful and butter's not cheap. So I just transfer the crumbs on over to a bowl. I added in the butter as well as three tablespoons of just some granulated sugar. So I'm just mixing that all together. You want all of your crumbs to be moistened with the butter. I have got my muffin pan out and I've added some little cupcake liners to it. And I'm just taking a big spoonful of the graham cracker mixture into each little cup. And what I'm gonna do next is I'm gonna grab a glass cup and I'm just gonna take the bottom of it and I'm going to press it firmly down. That way everything is not compacted, you have room for everything else and it's not gonna fall apart this way. So remember my oven is still at 325 and I'm gonna pop that in for about six minutes and then I'm gonna pull it out to cool down. To my KitchenAid mixer, we're gonna start on the cheesecake filling. So you're gonna need two blocks of cream cheese at room temperature. Philadelphia is my favorite, so I definitely wanted to use that for this recipe. I'm gonna use my paddle attachment to my mixer and I just mix that until it was nice and fluffy. And then I added in a third cup of sugar, a third cup of sour cream, and you'll also need a teaspoon of some pure vanilla extract. So as soon as I got that added, I'm just gonna mix it in well. I did make sure to stop a couple of times through the mixing process to really scrape down the sides because with these mixers, stuff just kind of wants to climb up the sides of the bowl and then it doesn't get mixed properly, so it's important to do that. You'll also need two room temperature eggs for this recipe and you wanna mix them in one at a time. I always recommend cracking them in a separate bowl, that way you don't get any accidental shells in there that are hard to see. So once I got all of that combined, I transferred it on over to a large measuring cup. Since it has the little spout, it's gonna be a lot easier to pour. So I'm just evenly distributing that between each little muffin cup. And I did fill these all the way to the top. I was worried that these were gonna overflow in the oven, but I had no issues with that, thankfully. By the time I got to the last cup, I still had quite a bit of that cheesecake mixture left over and I didn't wanna waste it, so I just kinda went back around to the ones that looked like they could use a little bit more and filled it all the way up. I baked these at 325 for 18 minutes and I'm just gonna let these cool down for about an hour before I try to transfer these. So meanwhile, I'm gonna make a strawberry sauce. So you're gonna need a container of strawberries. I did wash those through the container and I really lucked out with these because I got these at my local grocery store. They don't typically have the best looking strawberries, but I thought these looked perfect. And it's hard to get good strawberries this time of year and I didn't even know that Ocean Spray made strawberries. That's the first time I've seen that, but it just felt like these were meant to be. So I just took the tops off and I quartered them for the bigger ones and I just halved the smaller ones. I did set a few to the side so that I can use those as like a garnish for when I go to serve these. I'm gonna transfer these on over to my sauce pan. I'm gonna add a third cup of sugar to them as well as two teaspoons of some fresh lemon juice. I just squeezed that whole lemon into this little bowl and then I just measured it out that way. That's the easiest way I found to do it. I do have these on about a medium heat and I'm just going in and stirring these every minute or so. And basically I'm just waiting for these strawberries to start releasing their natural juices, just like so. And once it gets to this point, I'm just waiting for these to come up to a boil. And once it reaches that point, I will lower the heat a little bit and I'm gonna let those simmer for about 20 minutes so that that sauce can start to thicken. And this is my first time ever making a strawberry sauce and I really enjoyed it. I really thought that I was doing something here and I'm telling y'all, it improved my day. But like I said, I'm just going in every few minutes, stirring it and it was done here. So I'm just transferring it to a glass bowl and I'm gonna let this completely cool down on the counter before I move it to the fridge. So here is those cheesecakes after the hour in the little muffin cups. Now they're, you know, they're set. I can pick them up and remove them. I'm just putting them in this dish because it comes with a lid and I knew it would hold all of them. So I'm getting them covered up and I'm gonna let those chill in the fridge for a minimum of three hours, but you could definitely do this overnight. My strawberry sauce is also completely cooled down. So cover that and let that completely chill in the fridge. So fast forward, it's about nighttime now and I love this little three tiered tray set that I got at Walmart. I think it'd be a really great Christmas gift idea. If you know of anyone who loves to cook, got it for really cheap, just love it. It comes apart and you know, it doesn't take up a lot of room, but enough about that. I just put four on each row and I'm just taking a tablespoon of the strawberry sauce and just spooning it over each one. You definitely wanna make sure that you wait to do this step until right before you're gonna serve it. Like you don't want that sitting on there overnight or anything, cause it will look completely different the next day. But I think that these are just gorgeous. My husband has been craving strawberry cheesecake. It's been a long time since I've made anything like this. So he was really happy and I'm telling y'all these are so delicious. I know that strawberry cheesecake is like a pretty common thing, but I personally never would think to do this for like a party, but I'm telling y'all if you bring these somewhere, they're gonna be a huge hit. Next, I'm gonna be making some spinach and artichoke dip wonton cups. Spinach and artichoke dip is one of those things that we absolutely love and we don't have it all that often. So we always really look forward to it when we do. I've always thought that it's perfect for parties and I just think this is a really fun version of it with the wonton cups. It's just a really nice, easy, grab-and-go food idea. But as you can see, I'm just taking those little wonton wraps and I'm just placing one into each little individual muffin hole. And before anyone comments, because I've gotten some comments in the past about this muffin pan, it is not dirty, it is clean, it is just an old pan, it is well-loved, and I'm just not the type of person that throws out something that is perfectly good and usable just because it doesn't look the best. I'm just gonna use it until it cannot be used anymore. But after I get all of those filled, I'm gonna grab my Pam Cooking Spray and I'm just gonna give those a light coating of oil, that way it will crisp up nicely. My oven's preheated to 350 and I'm gonna bake those for five minutes. Meanwhile, I'm gonna get started on the spinach and artichoke dip. I'm gonna be using about half of that bag of frozen spinach and it is a little bit of a pain to kinda squeeze out all of the extra water in it. The way I do it is I run it through a fine mesh strainer and I take a fork to kinda squeeze it all out and then I transfer it to a paper towel and then continue squeezing it with my hands. It's a little tedious, but it's worth it. I'm also gonna be adding in about roughly half of this can of the quartered artichoke hearts. I did drain them well and I'm just going in and giving them a rough chop so that they won't be in such big pieces. Throwing that on into the mixing bowl and I'm gonna grab my Duke's Mayo and I have measured out a third cup of that. I'm also going to just eyeball about a quarter cup of some sour cream. This is probably a little bit more than that, but it's all good. Two ounces of room temperature cream cheese and I wanted to show y'all my favorite Parmesan cheese to buy. I did straight up about a half a cup of it and the recipe calls for two cloves of garlic. I'm just using one because it is on the bigger side and I will tell y'all, it is pretty potent in this recipe. I guess where it doesn't get like sauteed and the bake time's not too long, so if you're not a huge garlic lover, I would recommend garlic powder. And optional, I did add in some salt and pepper even though it didn't call for it, but I felt it needed it. I'm glad I added it. You wanna fold everything together real good. Gonna set that to the side and grab my wonton cups. I did have a couple of these where the sides of the wonton cup kinda wanted to fold over and I couldn't get it to open back up, so I didn't sweat it. I just continued filling them with the spinach and artichoke dip and it all worked out. I didn't have any issues with it, so not everything's gonna work out perfectly and that's okay. Also optional, it doesn't call for shredded cheese on top, but I felt it needed it. I feel like every spinach dip needs like an ooey gooey cheese topping to it, but I'm gonna pop that in at 350 degrees and I ended up baking these for about 12 minutes. These popped out with a fork super easily and I'm just transferring them to this little wooden cake stand that I got at Hobby Lobby. The last few months, I've been kinda dabbling into doing some grazing tables for a couple of weddings and I've done a few charcuterie boards for some events, so I've acquired quite a few new pieces for the kitchen, like this cake stand for instance, and it was really nice to utilize those in other ways for the purpose of this video. While this video is all about stuff you can make for parties and large gatherings, in reality, it's just for my little family and I just like making things look nice and putting special touches to things and using nice serving trays and whatnot, but I've went off on a tangent, but I just think this looks nice and this was really good. If you like spinach and artichoke dip, then I highly recommend this recipe. Lastly, I'm gonna be making a cranberry cheese ball. So I have an eight ounce block of room temperature cream cheese that I'm just adding to a small mixing bowl. I'm gonna measure out a half a cup of these dried cranberries, as well as a half a cup of these dried apricots. I get this big bag from Costco and I like to use those for my charcuterie boards as well. They're really good. So I'm just gonna go in and I'm gonna chop those up into smaller pieces. It is a little bit tricky because these are both on the stickier side, but nothing too crazy, just do the best that you can. Go ahead and throw those on into the bowl with the cream cheese. I'm also gonna grab an orange and I'm just gonna zest the skin of it right on into the bowl. This is gonna make it really nice and bright. I'm also gonna be using the juice of the orange. The recipe called for two tablespoons of orange juice, but I assume they meant to just squeeze the orange. That makes the most sense. So I'm just using my little juicer here and I did it in a separate little dish because I thought it was gonna be more juice than what came out of it, but it ended up being just the right amount. I could have saved a dish, but it's all good. So that's it ingredient-wise. It did have an optional step to add a little bit of ground ginger in it, but I opted out of that and I'm just using this little spatula to fold everything together. That wasn't too hard at all. You could serve it just like that, but I didn't want mine to be in a cheese ball. So I'm just wrapping it up in some cling wrap and forming it into a ball. And I'm just gonna place that in the refrigerator to kind of firm up a bit for about an hour, I would say. So fast forward, I'm just gonna transfer it to my little wooden board and I chose to pair it with these rosemary crackers. I had never had those before. They are very unique, really good. You could pair it with any cracker, of course. And I'm just gonna stick a cheese knife in the top so that it can be easily spread onto a cracker. I love how this turned out. I think it looks so nice and I feel like cheese balls are not as common as they used to be, at least where I'm from. I rarely ever see them anymore and I think they need to make a comeback because I love them personally and there is so many different variations of them. This one was definitely very different. We love the flavors of it and we loved it even more the next day, spread on some bagels. I've been putting them on some cinnamon raisin bagels and that's been really good. But that's all I got for y'all in today's video. I do hope that at least one of these recipes stood out to you and makes it to your holiday party. I want to thank you all so much for watching the video and I hope that all of you have a really happy Christmas and a wonderful new year.