Game Night

I finally got around to organising a game night! The food was made to look like different board games. Initially I wanted to use the game that represented the food item as a table placing, but in the end I only wrote cards to indicate which game the food item represented (in case the guests were not able to guess).

The welcome drinks represented the game Clue or Cluedo. It was shots of coconut liqueur with food colouring, each one representing one of the six characters in the game. I also wrote a small card for each drink, such as Miss Scarlett, Lead Pipe, Billiard Room, and attached it to the glasses with small pegs. Be careful to add too much food colouring, as it might stain if it spills.

The snacks were a combination of healthy and fatty, so the guests had options. The following snacks and games were combined:

• Poker cards: I used savoury cracker squares (sundried tomato, caramalised onion and sriracha flavoured). It was topped with small pieces of cheese shaped like hearts and diamonds, which were glued together with a little bit of cream cheese.
  
• Poker chips: Jalapeño cheese wheels, baked in the oven. This is really delicious, but it can be quite oily. This was one of my favourites.
  
• Scrabble: Triangle savoury crackers with painted letters on top. I mixed cream cheese and black food colouring then painted one letter on each cracker. It was served with guacamole.
• Jenga: Cheese and mustard puffs, baked in the oven. To make this, take a sheet of puff pastry and lightly roll it out into a square. Smear mustard on one half of the pastry (don't add too much mustard as it could overpower the puff). You can add some cheddar (or other cheeses), but it is optional. Then fold the pastry in half, so that the half without mustard fits on top of the half with mustard. Use egg wash to stick the edges to each other. Store this in the fridge for at least 30 minutes or until you are ready to bake (can be served hot or cold). Before you place it in the oven, add grated cheese on top, Parmesan, Gruyere, Cheddar, or any other cheese. Add egg wash on top of the pastry before adding the cheese to help the cheese stick. If you are a salt lover, add some sea salt with the cheese.
• Pick-up-sticks: This is the healthy part of the snacks. I served small carrots (skinned), cucumber sticks, zucchini sticks and then cheese straws. I added dips since not everyone likes raw veggies as is. The dips were sundried and basil cream cheese, caramalised onion hummus, roasted red pepper hummus, tzatziki and cashew butter dip.

The main meal had to be Trivial Pursuit, of course, one of my favourite games since childhood. We served wraps, which is always easy to prepare. I tried to place all toppings in a wheel to look like the trivial pursuit piece you play with, once you've collected all triangle wedges. As the game consists of yellow, orange, green, blue, pink and brown, I tried to match each food item with the game's colours. Pineapple pieces were used for yellow; guacamole, rocket and gherkins represented green; tomatoes were used for pink; cheddar cheese represented orange; black beans represented blue and hummus and chicken (which my husband braaied) represented brown.

For dessert, I made simple vanilla cupcakes with cappuccino extract, which added a delicious twist to the cupcakes and gave it a creamy taste. I also mixed some of the cappuccino extract into the icing sugar, which made the whole cupcake taste even creamier. I turned the cupcakes into dice by mixing some of the icing sugar with black food colouring. Each cupcake had a certain number of dots, ranging from one to six to represent dice.

The invitation