Posh party on a budget

Parties, they're great aren't they! But they can get pretty expensive. It's tricky to get a decent bottle of wine under £5 these days and where do you stop with combinations of spirits and mixers? So when my husband suggested having a party a few weeks ago for around 30 people I got my thinking hat on.

I started trawling the web for hot punch ideas. We had been given some whiskey for Christmas (which neither of us usually drink) so I thought it would be a thrifty idea to use that. (If you have different spirits lying around it would be worth searching for other recipes.)

I found 2 brilliant recipes - 1 for hot whiskey punch and one for hot cranberry and ginger punch (links below). They were easy to make and made the house smell delicious! When the whiskey punch ran out, we added sweet sherry to the cranberry punch which was even nicer! With all the antioxidants from the fruit they were full of antioxidants and Vitamin C.

I didn't work out how much it cost exactly but I don't think I spent more than £15 which is much more economical than 3 bottles of wine. I made them in the morning of the party which meant that I could just heat them up 10 minutes before everyone arrived.

My next quandry was food. I didn't want just crisps and nuts as they always end up being trampled into the rugs. Plus they're not something you can use as a tool for mingling. So I thought I'd make canapes. Well, the internet failed me, I couldn't find anything that inspired me. So I set about making something up.

I got some ready-made puff pastry and a selection of toppings, including: tapanade; basil; sundried tomato paste, pesto and mozzarella. I rolled out the pastry very thinly and cut it into squares (about 1 inch squared but that's up to you). I pricked the squares with a fork and then mixed and matched the toppings. We found that you had to be quite generous to get a good flavour. My favourite was the tapanade with mozarella. I set the oven to about 200 degrees C and they only took about 10 minutes. You had to keep an eye out that they didn't burn. I had to do them in batches because my oven is quite small. It was quite time consuming.

As an alternative I also made tomato and oregano "straws" where I rolled out a rectangle of pastry, spread a layer of tomato paste on it and sprinkled it with dried oregano. I then folded it in half longways, cut into strips, twisted and brushed with milk. Again, they were baked in about 10 minutes.

We made the nibbles earlier in the day but found that we had to heat them up in the oven when guests arrived as they had gone soft under the foil. All the ingredients for the nibbles cost about £15

So, for a grand total of about £30 we threw a lovely and quite sophisticated party. Our guests loved the punches and the nibbles and nothing was left at the end. Good job we invited everyone to bring a bottle!

http://www.drinksmixer.com/drink8458.html
http://www.sunset.com/food-wine/kitchen-assistant/warm-drinks-00418000073450/page9.html