Festive Holiday Appetizers | Simple Recipes for Parties

Hi friends, it's Elizabeth Stone. Thank you for joining us today on an invitation. Today I am inviting you to learn how to make some easy appetizers that you can make at home and use for the holidays. These are super easy and I think you'll enjoy them. Okay, so I'm going to make four different easy appetizers today. The first one we're going to do is what I call a tomato tart. It's like a little mini pizza but it is so yummy and so good. So I have got a little ball of puff pastry dough here. So you can get puff pastry from the grocery store. Pepperidge Farm makes a great puff pastry dough and so I've just let this thaw out a little bit and I rolled it into a ball. I'm going to take a little bit of flour and put it onto my cutting board here and then I'm going to put this on here and just press it down and we're going to roll it out. Usually what I do is I turn it over a little bit, make sure there's plenty of flour on it and you want it to be nice and thin. It doesn't have to be real thin. This is about a half a sheet that you would buy in the freezer. The Pepperidge Farm box is about a half a sheet and it's probably going to make about six, maybe eight tomato tarts and you'll see in just a minute. Okay, so I think that looks good. You can see the thickness of it is pretty thin and this is just a cookie cutter, a round cookie cutter. It's a biscuit cutter or a round cookie cutter and so I'm just going to go around like this and cut quite a few circles. We'll set them over there when they're done. This is something we sell in our food shop here at Silverstone Events because it's so easy and it's very yummy. So now you see it made a lot more than I thought it was going to make. Now I have got a sheet pan here, just a little sheet pan with some parchment paper. We're going to just put these on here just like that. You don't need to put anything on the parchment paper. All right, I have a little bit of grated cheddar cheese. I mean cheddar cheese. That doesn't look like cheddar cheese, does it? It's parmesan cheese. That's why it doesn't look like cheddar. So I'm going to put a little bit on each one of these, just a little dab. Sometimes if I don't have shredded parm, I use powdered parm. You can do that too. You can use grated parm. I just think the shredded is prettier. And then I have some cracked black pepper. You don't want a lot of this but just a few little pieces on there. This gives it the most amazing flavor. Just a little pop of heat and it just pops in your mouth. And the parmesan cheese has plenty of salt in it, so you don't need to salt these at all. Then these are Roma tomatoes that we have sliced. And you will see I selected a cookie cutter that's about the exact same size as these Roma tomato slices. So they sit on there almost perfectly. And then we're going to come back with just a little bit more parmesan right on top. And then we've preheated our oven to 350 degrees. And we're going to go in there for about 10 to 15 minutes. You're looking for the puff pastry to get puffed and brown. And you will not believe how fabulous these are. Sometimes we put fresh basil on top of them. Sometimes we put fresh mozzarella and basil on top of them. But they are perfectly yummy just like this. Okay, so I just put the tomato tarts in the oven. We're going to put them in there for about 15 minutes. And while we're doing that and waiting for those, I've got three other quick and easy appetizers for us to whip out. So this first one that we're going to do is the brie tartlet with borscht on top of it. We made the brie tartlet in a different video. It's about all about brie. So check that one out to see how to make these. But aren't these beautiful little brie tartlets made in phyllo cups? This is another variation. I'm using my favorite borscht and cheese. You can use any flavor. I tend to like the garlic and herb is my favorite. And literally, I'm just going to take a little dab and put it on top of each one just like that. It's so simple. And the combination of brie and borscht is really yummy. And it just the borscht just makes the whole thing pop. Again, super simple, super easy. You could run these back in the oven if you wanted to, to melt the borscht. You don't have to. I usually don't, because I usually run out of time. Of course, unless we're catering and then somebody else is doing it for me. But so I've got that. So I put that on. And then we've got a little bit of minced chives here. And I'm just going to add a little bit of chives to the top. As you can see, I put it on this tray with some beautiful fresh herbs. Look, all done. Isn't that amazing? And this next one we're going to do is another brie appetizer. Brie is so versatile when you are entertaining. If you don't like brie, then you could do a different soft cheese. But so this one is what I call a honey roasted pear and brie croustade. So we have some toast rounds that we made. You can buy these toast. You can buy melba toast. This is basically white bread toasted with butter. I've got some little slices of brie cheese. And then we have pears that we have sliced, roasted in the oven with just a touch of honey, a little bit of diced toasted pecans, and some fresh orange zest. This one you really do need to make ahead of time. Make all these components ahead of time so that this is easy for you to do right before the party. And so I'm going to take our brie that we have here. I've just put these toast rounds right on the platter with a little garnish. And I'm going to cut these pieces of brie into a little bit smaller piece. I'm just going to go right down the middle. So now we have these little mini pieces of brie that I'm going to put right on top of here. Now, if you don't like the rind, I left the rind on these, you can buy the cream brie from the grocery store. It also works really well. And then you just spread it on the toast point or toast round, however you like to do that. Then I have these little thin slices of pear that I'm just going to lay on top of here. Actually, that one's a little big. We probably want to cut this one in half. So we're going to do that. And what is the most important piece to this hors d'oeuvre is that orange zest. So now I've got the pear on there, and then I'm going to take a little bit of pecans and just sprinkle a few on top, just like this. It's okay if they fall off to the side because then they're just on the platter and they still look really pretty. And then you're going to take the orange zest. We've just taken a grater and grated this right off the rind of the of the orange. And I'm just going to sprinkle a little bit on here. You will be, cannot believe how that orange just goes pop in your mouth. It is so yummy. So there's that one. And now we have one more that I'm going to do. So now I'm going to make an avocado toast that I like to make. This is a little bit different from the traditional avocado toast that everybody does. So we have taken some marble rye bread. You can use pumpernickel, but I love the color of this. Again, we've toasted it with butter. Any bread toasted with butter is the most perfect base for an appetizer as long as you're not gluten-free. If you are, you could use gluten-free bread, but this is so pretty. And then I'm going to take this avocado and I'm going to scoop it into a bowl here. I've just cut this in half and I'm just going to scoop this in here and I'm going to mash it up just a little bit and then I'm going to spread just a touch on the base of each of these. Look how pretty that green is against that brown. That's one of the reasons I love to use these marble toast rounds because of the color. And then my favorite, favorite seasoning in the whole world is Jane's Mixed Up Crazy Salt. It's a sea salt. It's got herbs, garlic, all different flavoring in it. It's not as heavy as regular salt and I just put a little bit in my hand and sprinkle just a touch on top of each one of these avocado toasts to give it some good flavor. I have taken some grapefruit segments and this makes this very special and you just want to chop them up really small into little diced pieces just like that. And you can buy the segments already done at the grocery store if you want or you can just do a fresh grapefruit and do the segments. And then we're going to come back on here with just a touch and here again I'm looking at color. You have to always remember you eat first with your eyes, second with your nose, and last with your mouth. All right so now we've got that and then one of the things that I love to do is this adds another complexity and flavor to it. These are just radishes that we've sliced and julienned and I'm just going to put one piece right there across the top and then you've got this beautiful, very artistic hors d'oeuvre that's very, very simple to make. And don't forget, I want to get rid of that piece. I don't like that piece. Sometimes food doesn't cooperate so you have to just keep going. And now I'm going to take an orange that I have over here and I'm going to slice it like we've done on these other trays and I'm just going to lay this across the back here. Very simple, just like that. And then I'm going to put some fresh rosemary on either side of it and you have a garnish tray that's beautiful and ready to be served. That is three different, very easy appetizers and we are going to go get our tomato tarts. Okay, look at these. These just came out of the oven about 15 minutes and I want you to see they're really hot but I want you to see how they got nice and puffy and look how yummy that cheese looks on top. So you can serve these hot. That's my favorite way to serve them. If they get to room temperature they're just fine but I do like them served hot and one of the reasons, remember we were talking about that shredded parmesan, look how pretty it is when it makes it kind of cooks on the outside and makes those little long squiggly pieces and I just think that's so fun and interesting. So just to recap, this is our brie tartlet topped with boursin cheese, a little bit of chives. We have the avocado toast that I did on marble rye with grapefruit segments and a little bit of radish on top. Then this was our honey roasted pear and brie croustade. Isn't that pretty? And then we finished with this tomato tart. This is a buffet that you could serve to your guest for cocktails. Thank you for joining us today for this episode of An Invitation. Remember, we're here to make entertaining easier for you. Make it fun, make it easy and most important, enjoy the experience. Cheers!