We love gathering friends and family to watch football, especially the Dawgs! We created the ultimate spread, so you can score big at your next football party.
Our Menu
• Signature Snack Trio
• Fresh Popcorn
• Sweet Pepper Poppers
• The Easiest Cheeseburger Sliders
• Sic ‘em Skewers
• Fall Cheeseboard
• Iced Tea Bar
• Best Ever Brownies
You’ll find our Signature Snack Trio at most of our parties! The snack trio includes: yogurt-covered pretzels, gummy bears, and mixed nuts. It’s the perfect salty, sweet, crunchy, and chewy combination that guests will love! For the Game Day Party, we put the snack trio in football themed baking/treat cups from Home Goods.
To feed a crowd, we made The Easiest Cheeseburger Sliders from Food Network. This recipe uses Hawaiian rolls, which in our opinion, make the best slider buns. What we really loved about this recipe is you make all the burgers together and then cut them up at the end instead of making each slider individually. The BBQ chips on top added a special crunch and unexpected touch.
Pepper Poppers are game day staple, but most of the time these are spicy and fried. We wanted to lighten them up, so we made these Sweet Pepper Poppers from Food Network. This recipe uses sweet peppers baked in the oven instead of jalapeños fried in oil. The panko breadcrumbs add a nice crunch to mimic the fried breading.
We created our Sic ’em Skewers specifically for the Dawgs! Create your own skewers based on your team’s colors.
For our Fall Cheeseboard, we gathered up our favorite cheeses, meats, and accoutrements. To add a Game Day touch, we used the Red Georgia GRUB Paper from Eat Drink Host. The best thing about cheeseboards is they are completely customizable based on your preferences. We like to gather two to three meats with four to five different cheeses of different varieties. For this board, we used salami, prosciutto, sharp cheddar, brie, herbed Boursin, Manchego, and blue cheese. The accoutrements don’t have to be fancy or overly complicated. To make this a fall cheeseboard, we loaded up on fresh figs, raspberries, and blackberries (use what’s in season!).
Drink stations are one of our favorite hosting tips. Guests can easily make their own drinks to their liking without the host playing bartender. When we set up a station, we put everything guests need in one spot: glasses, ice, mixers, and garnishes. For our Game Day Party, we created an Iced Tea Bar with different flavored syrups. We brewed a big pitcher of unsweet tea and created three different fruit or herb syrups to mix with the tea: Peach, Mint, and Lemon. We included garnishes like fresh mint, lemon slices, and raspberries.
To make the simple syrups, combine equal parts of granulated sugar and water in a small pot. Heat over medium-low heat until the sugar is dissolved. As the mixture cools, mix in your flavoring. For peach, we added ripe peaches and muddled to release the juice. For mint, we added a handful of fresh mint, and finally, for lemon, we added the juice and zest from one lemon. Once cooled, strain out the fruit and herbs and pour into an airtight container. Label and store in the fridge.
There’s something about football and brownies that just go together. I had never made brownies from scratch before, so I did a lot of research online to find brownies that were chewy, fudgy, and perfect. These brownies totally fit the bill, and we will be making these for many years to come! Make these and you’ll see why we’ve named them Best Ever Brownies.
Find the recipe on The Vanilla Bean Blog.
