Baby Shower Catering That Suits The Guest Of Honour

The guest of honour cannot eat half of it

That is the whole problem, and most baby shower catering advice ignores it entirely in favour of colour-coordinated cupcakes.

There is a real list of foods the NHS advises pregnant women to avoid, and a standard party buffet walks straight into several of them. It is not difficult to work around, but it does have to be done deliberately, and it is a poor moment to discover a problem.

What to be careful with

The usual buffet items worth thinking about:

• Soft and mould-ripened cheeses: brie, camembert, and blue cheeses. A cheese board is the classic baby shower own goal.
• Pâté, of any kind.
• Cured and cold-smoked things, some smoked salmon and some charcuterie, depending on preparation.
• Anything with raw or lightly cooked egg, homemade mayonnaise, mousses, certain desserts.
• Undercooked meat, which at a buffet is rarely an issue but worth saying.

None of that rules out a good spread. It rules out about five items.

What works instead

Sandwiches, and plenty of them. Ham, cheddar, tuna crunch, egg mayo made with pasteurised egg, chicken. Buffet 1 is £5.50 a head; Buffet 5 with savouries is £7.70.

Savouries that are properly cooked. Sausage rolls, pork pies, quiche, chicken goujons, samosas, falafel: all fine and all substantial.

Fresh fruit. A fruit platter serving ten is £13.80 and it is the thing that gets eaten at an afternoon party when everything else feels heavy.

Cake. Homemade cakes are £2.25 a head, brownie, lemon drizzle, ginger cake, tiffin. Or a dessert grazing board at £97.00 a crate serving ten if you want the table to be the centrepiece, which at a baby shower it often is.

Tell us, and we will handle it

The simplest approach: say when you order that it is a baby shower. We will keep the soft cheeses and the pâté off it without you having to list them, and if you want a cheese selection for the other guests we will send hard cheeses rather than the usual mixed board.

That is a thirty-second conversation and it removes the entire problem.

Afternoon, not evening

Baby showers work best between about one and four. The guest of honour is usually more comfortable earlier in the day, people are not drinking heavily, and it fits round the fact that a good share of the guests will have children of their own with them.

Which raises the other thing: if children are coming, order the kids menu at £8.00 a head separately. It costs less than feeding them from the adult buffet and they will actually eat it.

Numbers

Baby showers are usually twenty to forty, which is comfortably under any minimum. Delivery is free on orders over £20 and there is no lower limit beyond that.

Order for slightly more than you expect. It is a party where people bring their mothers.

Planning one? Party catering has the range and prices, and do mention the occasion when you order.