Ham and Cheese Sliders, Bacon and Cheddar Deviled Eggs, and a Quick Idea for Fruit Salad

 

I'm not quite adept yet when it comes to entertaining.  Serving my family dinner is one thing.  Serving a large number of people is quite intimidating.  For one, I'm incredibly shy which doesn't help matters.  Secondly, I worry way too much.  What if my guests don't like what I'm serving?  What if there's not enough?  What if it's cold by the time it gets to the table?  Believe me, if there is something to fret over I'll do it.  So, when planning my Eggland's Best Pink Party & Brunch, I concentrated on making things easy.

First and foremost, I wanted all the food to be able to be served room temperature.  I didn't want to worry about keeping food hot.  Once I determined that I wanted everything to be served at room temperature I started planning the other details.  I wanted the food to be as pink as possible.  I also wanted to keep things as light and easy as possible.  I'm always a fan of finger foods so I decided to try and chose recipes that can, for the most part, be eaten out of hand. 

These delicious ham and cheese sliders met all my criteria and I after seeing them all over pinterest, I was so happy to get the chance to make them.  The recipe couldn't be any simpler.  Either make or buy some fluffy white rolls, layer them with honey ham, swiss cheese, and a quick smear of mayo and place into a baking dish.  Whip up a batch of poppyseed sauce (consisting of butter, mustard, Worcestershire sauce, and a bit of onion) and pour over the rolls.  Bake the sandwiches until the cheese starts to melt and the sauce oozes down the sides of the rolls. The recipe (and a truly mouth watering photo can be found HERE).

Deviled eggs are always such a hit at any party and I knew I wanted to serve them.  My struggle was trying to add a bit of pink to them.  Using smoked salmon crossed my mind, but I didn't know how my guests felt about fish so I kept looking up different recipes.  I finally stumbled across this recipe for Bacon and Cheddar Deviled Eggs on Allrecipes.com.  These are your standard deviled eggs with just a tad of chopped bacon and shredded cheddar cheese added in.  These eggs were a hit, but my family and I agreed that we still like the good old standard deviled egg a little better.

Lastly, I knew I wanted to have something really colorful, fresh, and vibrant to put on the table so I went with a fruit salad.  I struck it rich in the produce department and was able to find beautiful ripe kiwi, starfruit, and passion fruit (all of them pretty rare finds in my neck of the woods).  I decided to do an exotic twist on traditional fruit salad using the passion fruit pulp as a dressing of sorts.  I added strawberries, pineapple, cantaloupe, grapes, blueberries, plums, kiwi, and starfruit to my platter and garnished it with halved passion fruit to use as a topping. If you want to eat the rainbow, this is for you.

I had so much fun hosting the party and was honored to help raise awareness for the fight against breast cancer.  A huge thanks to Eggland's Best for making it all possible! 

Be on the lookout for more Eggland's Best Pink Parties coming this month.