Confirmation Party Foods

People often wonder what to serve at celebrations following the reception of sacraments. "Are there foods that are traditional for the various sacraments?" and "What kinds of foods might be symbolic for the sacrament?" are questions I have heard. Last spring we highlighted First Communion Celebrations in Catholic Cuisine's first From Thy Bounty Fair, but there have been only a few post related to foods which would be fitting for a Confirmation celebration.

Our family recently celebrated a confirmation and I wanted to share some of the ideas we had for the party that followed. Since we are still in the Confirmation season, hopefully some of these ideas will be helpful to you or spark other ideas. And of course any ideas that would work well for a Confirmation party could also be incorporated into a Pentecost celebration as well.

Our party included some typical buffet-fare (deli sandwiches, potato salad, and chips) which we accented with several special Confirmation themed foods we though would be symbolic of the day. Our buffet included:

• "Fruits of the Spirit" Salad (Though we used only 7 fruits - more like the gifts - rather than the 12 fruits. And no dressing was used, just the fruits.)


• Seven-layer bean dip (7 again to represent the 7 gifts of the Holy Spirit)


• "Tongues of Fire" Salad (A green tossed salad with strips of red, yellow and orange bell pepper on top)
  

A fun and sweet treat for after the meal was Dove chocolate - calling to mind the dove imagery of the Holy Spirit.

And the main centerpiece of the celebration was the cake which we decorated with the dove and tongues of fire representing the gifts of the Holy Spirit.

We first traced and cut out a paper dove the size and shape we wanted for the cake top. We placed that on the frosted cake (chocolate was used so that the white dove would stand out) and traced around the outline with a toothpick.

When the pattern was lifted we had an outline of a dove to fill in with the white frosting. We used a star tip to fill in the body and one the tips with the elongated hole (either the leaf or rose tip) to form the feathers. We pulled a toothpick through the frosting to give the feathers a more "feathery" appearance. The tongues of fire, the beak and the rays from the doves head were piped on with yellow-orange tinted frosting.

If you have ideas for foods to celebrate a Confirmation, please share then with us. If you have a link to a blog post that would be great. Either leave your link or idea in the comments section or send it to me at mary.cathcuisine at gmail dot com. I'd love to do a follow-up post, a mini From Thy Bounty Fair, if there is enough response.