Today I want to talk about having a celebration brunch. It’s great for summertime, and you can even do brunch in the winter. We’ll be talking about a fun festive brunch with your family or your extended family, your friends, or just anybody that you want to do something a little special with. I’m going to mention some food ideas and then a couple of different themes with a few food-related activities that you can add to it to make it extra special.
Having brunch is fun because it doesn’t have to be as early as breakfast, and you get to eat foods that are a mix between breakfast and lunch, ones that you may not normally eat. You don’t really need lunch either afterwards, and you can make it a little special with a few extra things.
So, here are some good foods for a brunch. Mini quiches are probably the first thing that comes to mind. You can make these using bacon, and obviously egg and vegetables of some kind – whatever’s your favorite. Maybe you could make something like cheese quiche, or cheese and corn or zucchini quiche; anything like that.
A fun idea is to have a bagel station. You can have a variety of bagels – onion bagels, sesame bagels, plain bagels, and everybody builds their own. You can have fillings like cream cheese that you’ve softened a bit, smoked salmon, cucumber, tuna with mayo, chicken mayo – chicken salad style, or any kind of lettuce, tomatoes, or whatever you like on your bagels. Maybe you can do pastrami. It’s also interesting to have roast vegetables with haloumi cheese inside a bagel.
Then there’s things like breakfast burritos. You can have fillings like eggs, cheese, cut up sausage, and vegetables in those. It’s nice to have those ready in a hot dish with a lid on it so that people can help themselves from it. You could do a pancake bar or a waffle bar. You could use crepes and do fillings, or have American style pancakes with toppings. You can do maple syrup or honey. There’s berries, bananas, nutella, whipped cream, and any kind of sprinkles – those are extra fun.
For another side, you could do fruit skewers. These are like fruit salad on a skewer – maybe a piece of strawberry, maybe even a piece of cheese in between a couple of other berries, as well as some melon or papaya. You could do a regular fruit salad with things like grapes.
You could do a DIY yogurt buffet where everybody builds their own yogurt jar. There would be different varieties of yogurt – you can have plain Greek yogurt, you can have some flavored peach or strawberry yogurt, or whatever you like. Then do some sides that people can add, like granola, berries, honey, maybe even almond butter, or whatever works.
You could do a cheese and charcuterie platter with cuts of meat. Lay out some prosciutto, some ham, salami, some cold chicken slices, and then various types of cheese. Maybe you can have some sliced mozzarella, Jack cheese, cheddar, emmentale, and swiss cheese – those are delicious.
You could have croissants or muffins to add to what you already have. The muffins can be lemon and poppy seed, blueberry, or something like that. You could have a croissant bar as well, where you have croissants to go with honey and butter on the side. You can also have cold meats and cheeses to put inside them, or you can just have them as an extra with your other items.
Juices are always great – fresh juices like orange, apple, or pineapple juice. You could have some iced tea like berry iced tea, or water kefir, or even flavored water. You could add citrus, mint, or cucumber slices to that.
Decorate the table to make it look pretty. Maybe use a punch bowl for some nice punch, or for your water with the cucumber and mint in it. If you have decanters, those are great. Just think about how you want the meal to look to make it elegant and special. You could set a table outside with a lovely tablecloth, folded napkins, and elegant glasses and plates. You could do it inside with some flowers on the table, maybe some flower petals sprinkled all over.
So, let’s talk about some activities that’ll be fun to do during a brunch, and some food related things. You could do a thankful toast, where everyone can share something they’re thankful for. You could do a memory table where you put a photo frame or collage with various pictures involving the people who are at the brunch for people to look at. You can have some lovely music playing in the background, like soft, French cafe music, or jazz.
If you’re having pancakes, you can do a pancake art contest. Put the batter in squeeze bottles, and then let the people create their own shapes or fun images on a griddle. It’s usually easiest to have the pancakes done in advance, and have people just add the toppings, but you could do this as well as that with a bit of extra pancake batter for people to create their shapes. You could also do a cupcake decorating activity. You provide the cupcakes and then the icing, and then everyone can decorate them and add chocolate chips or sprinkles. This’ll work well for kids.
You could have a fruit relay race, using strawberries or grapes on spoons. You have to carry the fruit in the spoon to a bowl on the other side of the yard, and go back and forth with the whole team until all the fruit’s moved over. You can play “guess the flavor” with jelly, yogurt, or juice. It’s a blindfolded taste test, and you can keep score and give a silly prize for whoever guesses the most things correctly.
It might be fun to have little gifts to send home with the guests. Maybe this can be mini jars of jam or honey, a recipe card for something you served at the brunch that you know people will ask about, or a small homemade muffin with a cute note, wrapped up in a brown bag or a plastic bag.
Here’s a French themed brunch menu and a few other ideas for it. You can put up the French flag if you like, but generally just have French cuisine. Quiche Lorraine is a bacon, egg, and cheese quiche. You could also do a spinach and goat cheese quiche, or croque monsieur or croque madam. This is a toasted ham and cheese sandwich with bechamel sauce on top, and in the croque madam, a fried egg on top.
You could do savory crepes with fillings like mushrooms and gruyere. You could have smoked salmon and crème fraîche in croissants, and some pain au chocolat. If you have a French bakery nearby, you can get some of that type of French pastries. You could do baguette slices with jam, butter, and a soft cheese like camembert or ricotta. You could also do something like ricotta and prosciutto on the baguette. You can do little tarts – fruit tarts, lemon tarts – dessert tarts. Sparkling water with lemon slices is lovely, or you could have espresso.
As an activity, you could do cheese tasting, or guess the cheese. You could have brie, camember, chevre, which is soft goats cheese, and comte. Then you blindfold your guests and then have them taste and guess what the cheese is.
You can search online for a recipe for a Crème Brûlée french toast, which is amazing. It’s a combination of the Crème Brûlée flavor with the custardy french toast. You could also just do ordinary french toast; soak it in egg and milk, and then it up and add a bit of maple syrup and salt.
Also, any type of puff pastry tarts or whatever you want to make is great. You should listen to the episode before this one; it’s about puff pastry. Little butternut and feta puff pastry tarts are always great at a brunch. You can make the baked puff pastry wreath we talked about last time, with cheeses or nuts, or anything you want. Puff pastry is a really quick and easy way to make something for brunch, and then you don’t always have to go and find a french bakery for your pastries. You can do an onion tart with puff pastry, which is very easy. I’ve got the recipes for these puff pastry tarts in my recipe book, Elegant, Easy Appetizers. There’s also a tart that’s got tomatoes and mozzarella. You can find the book on Familyfoodformoms.com,
You should definitely play some French Bistro music in the background. Another fun activity would be the building a charcuterie board challenge. Each guest would need a small wooden board or an elegant plate, and then they each try to make the prettiest little charcuterie board using baguette slices, cold meats, cheeses, fruits, or anything that you like. Judge them by their French flair. You can also have little french food flags to stick into certain items.
You could dress in French style fashion. Everybody can wear berets, scarves, or anything that feels elegant and French. You could do an Eiffel Tower photo booth with some kind of backdrop of the Eiffel Tower. You could have some photo props like mustaches, berries, a cafe sign, a baguette, or anything like that, and take some fun photos of your guests.
As party favors, again, you could do little jars of French Jam if you have an international store nearby, or you could do little Eiffel Tower key chains, macarons – individual boxes of them are lovely, or a printed recipe for something French that you’ve included.
If you want to do an Asian inspired brunch, I have some ideas for you. The decor should be peaceful and bright with things like florals. Think cherry blossoms or orchids, and use bamboo in the serving trays or mats. You can use tiny little Chinese teacups. Play some traditional Chinese, Korean, or Japanese instrumental music.
For your menu, you should stick to small plates like mini steamed buns. For this one, it’s probably a good idea to get takeout unless you’re Asian and know how to cook all these fancy things. Takeout is always a good way to get the authentic things, and often you can find them at a grocery store as well. Get things like bao buns, pork, cabbage, tofu, et cetera. You can serve some things in a bamboo steamer, if you have one, as an elegant dish.
You can do Thai style savory crepes, or whatever you can find that’s Asian. You can do spring rolls – there’s chicken, vegetarian, and many other kinds. Maybe add some sushi of the kinds you know your guests will enjoy. You can do some grilled or tempura shrimp or prawns. There’s lots of Asian food that you can find and use. Your drinks can be Asian inspired teas like Jasmine green tea or Thai iced tea. You can do hot or iced versions of Asian teas with honey, lemon, or whatever you enjoy.
You could have a DIY macha station. You can whisk it with oat milk, almond milk, or real cow’s milk. You can choose your flavors. In the summer, it might be fun to do Asian ice like they do in the Philippines. Sometimes they even add corn to the ice, but there are always the syrupy toppings to add to it. You could make your own spring roll station for fun, if you are into that kind of thing.
Now for some fun activities. You can do a chopstick challenge where you can see who can transfer the most items from one bowl to another using chopsticks. Use items like marshmallows, and jelly beans. You could play guess the ingredient, where you have something like pot stickers, and people have to guess the filling. You could have bits of spring roll where people guess the filling. Speaking of pot stickers, those are another fun thing to add to your meal. You could have Asian sauces that people have to guess – for example, things like miso, soy sauce, chili oil, coconut milk, or sesame paste.
You could do a fun food emoji quiz where you have to guess the Asian dish based on a whole lot of food emojis. A little bowl of rice, a fish, and a fire would be grilled fish with rice, and noodles with chopsticks and coconut milk would be ramen. You can do anything that you can think of that’s got emojis that it’ll match. The guests have to write down their guesses and then compare them.
You can often find interesting and unusual Asian snacks at a grocery store or an Asian store, and it’s fun to taste those blindfolded. You can get things like shrimp chips and wasabi peas, and everybody has to rank them from least to most surprising, or perhaps from “would eat again” or “never touch again”, et cetera.
You could do Asian edition charades where you have to act out cooking a certain food or dining custom – things like making sushi, perhaps eating rice with chopsticks, slurping noodles, stir frying in a wok, et cetera. There are props needed, just the clues and somebody to act them out. You can take home favors like small tins of tea, green tea bags, even a bamboo steamer, although that’s quite an expensive gift, or little sets of chopsticks. You can even personalize the chopsticks with a guest’s name.
So, there are a lot of ways to be creative. If you want to have a brunch, think about what your favorite style of food is. Is it just typical brunch food?
Is it French? Is it Asian? Is it something else? Write down some ideas of the kind of foods and snacks you love. Write down some ideas for food related activities, party favors, decorations, and what kind of things you want to do. It can be a lot of fun to do with friends.
So, I hope you feel inspired, andI hope you have a fun brunch at some point. Let me know if you do. My email address is karyn@familyfoodformoms.com.
