Doctor Who Party Food - Recipes

Last week I wrote a blog post about throwing a Doctor Who themed party ahead of the 50th anniversary episode of Doctor Who. I included ideas for food, costumes, decorations and games, though I wasn't planning to do all of them myself. Last night was the Day of the Doctor and I gathered with my parents, my boyfriend and his mum to watch; I didn't throw a full themed party but planned a Doctor Who-inspired menu. I'll go through each dish that I made and give the recipes below.

For the party I made:

Fishfingers in custard (an Amy Pond favourite - and don't worry, it wasn't actually custard)

K9 dogs - hot dogs

Potato wedges

Adipose (mini marshmallow men)

Dalek cupcakes (Devil's food cake with Lakeland decorations)

Cybermen and K9 ginger cookies (as the Doctor has had several ginger companions)

Sonic Screwdrivers (screwdriver cocktail served in a flashing glass).

First I began by making the cupcakes, and decided that a Devil's food cake recipe was the most appropriate for the evil Daleks. This recipe is adapted from a little book called "Easy Cupcakes" from Marks & Spencer.

To make a dozen large cupcakes, you need:

100g margarine

225g caster sugar

4 eggs

225g plain flour

1 tsp bicarb of soda

50g cocoa powder

250ml sour cream

For the buttercream

200g butter, softened

400g icing sugar (adapt the quantity depending on how stiff the icing is, which will partly depend on how soft your butter is)

50g cocoa powder

For the filling: Nutella chocolate spread (optional)

To decorate I used these Dalek cupcake wraps and toppers from Lakeland 

Preheat the oven to 180C. Cream the marg, sugar and cocoa powder in a large bowl,

Mix in the eggs and the soured cream until you have a smooth mixture.

This is the Dalek cupcake set. It costs £9.99 for not an awful lot - you get 24 cardboard cupcake wraps in four colours, and four matching heads which are also made of cardboard, with a pick you insert into the top of the cake. They are well made and really easy to use. The cupcake wrappers can fasten on three notches as well so you can adapt them to the size of your cupcake.

So here I have the cake batter

Spoon into cupcake or muffin cases

Bake in the preheaten oven for 15-20 minutes until the cupcakes have risen and a skewer comes out clean. Leave the cupcakes to cool on a wire rack.

I decided to fill the cupcakes by scooping out the top and adding a spoonful of Nutella, and then replacing the lid. I then piped chocolate buttercream in a swirl on top of the cupcake. Place the cupcake wrappers around the cake and put the Dalek head on top. I think these look great!

 


Next I made ginger cookies, to reflect the Doctor Who's companions Amy Pond, Donna Noble and Mel (Bonnie Langford) - were there any other ginger companions?

I used a simple sugar cookie recipe
100g butter, softened
100g caster sugar
200g plain flour
1 egg
2 tsp ground ginger

I actually ended up making two batches of this.

Preheat the oven to 180C. Mix the butter and caster sugar then mix in the flour until you have a breadcrumb-like consistency.

Mix in the ginger and the egg and knead into a dough

I use this cookie cutter set from Lakeland. You get a cybermen and a K9 cookie cutter for £4.99 which I think is good value. They are plunger cutters so leave an indentation on the cookie of the design, that looks really good.

Here are the cookies before they go in the oven

And after they came out

 I like how the cookies are decorated in the picture on the Lakeland website; you can use the same cutter on a piece of rolled out fondant to imprint the same design, then decorate it with silver balls and piping icing. I didn't have a huge amount of time so I decided to leave some of the cookies plain, and sandwich some of them together with leftover buttercream from my cupcakes.

I also used a tube of Dr. Oetker writing icing to pipe along the lines of the cookie. I was a little wobbly but it was very easy to follow the design so I think these look OK.

Setting out the cakes and cookies on the table

I didn't go to great lengths to decorate the house but I did buy this Tardis door poster from Ebay which I hung on the entrance to the living room.

I also couldn't resist making Adipose - from an episode of Doctor Who were diet pills make people's fat cells turn into little creatures that scurry away. I thought they were really cute! This is what they look like in Doctor Who on the left, and on the right is what they look like made out of marshmallow! I used a normal marshmallow for the body and two mini marshmallows for the legs, and a mini marshmallow cut in half for the arms - they are stuck on with a little buttercream but you could also use edible glue. I drew on the face with an edible ink pen which you can get from Amazon or cake decorating suppliers.

I bought some Doctor Who paper plates and napkins; here you can see a group of Adipose on a Tardis plate.

I made a screwdriver cocktail (which is just vodka and orange) and to make it sonic, I used a glass I got from Bubba Gump's restaurant in America - when you press the button on the bottom, the base and rim of the glass light up and flash! Now if that isn't a sonic screwdriver, I don't know what is...

The main courses were then cooked in the oven. There's an episode of Doctor Who I haven't actually seen yet as I am playing catch up, where a young Amy Pond gives the Doctor fish fingers dipped in custard. I added some yellow food colouring to a small bowl of mayonnaise which gave the desired effect!

And finally K9 (hot) dogs with onions. Did you watch the Doctor Who 50th anniversary episode, and did you do anything like this?

Doctor Who Theme Dinner Party

Unless you live on another planet you know that the 50th anniversary episode of Doctor Who takes place next weekend. Actually, even if you live on another planet you probably know that (Doctor Who is famous and feared across the galaxy, after all!). I do love a good excuse for a theme party so I thought I would give you a sneak preview of the dinner party I’m having next Saturday and give you some ideas of how to throw your own Doctor Who themed party, whether it’s as a viewing party for the 50th anniversary episode or when the next series starts, or if it’s your birthday and you’re a big fan.

When it comes to party planning, I like to organize my thoughts under certain headings: Guests, Food, and Entertainment. That way you can be sure you haven’t missed anything!

Guests
My parents are coming to stay this week so my dinner party will be for family rather than friends. For that reason I’m not going to ask my parents or my boyfriend’s mum to dress up, but if you are throwing your own party I highly recommend costumes to get into the spirit of things! It’s not as difficult as you think: here are some ideas.

• It could be fun to each dress like different Doctors – whether that’s leather jacket like Christopher Eccleston, a stripey scarf like Tom Baker or a bow tie and jacket like Matt Smith, take your sartorial cues from the decade in which your favourite Doctor appeared.
• If you are good with face paint how about going as Vastra, the lizard woman who sometimes assists Doctor Who in his adventures?
• I’d love to dress up like one of the Sisters of Plenitude (cat nurses) but try as I might I can’t find a costume online – you could make your own though.
• How imaginative and good with a needle and thread (or glue gun) you are may decide which of Doctor Who's many adversaries you could dress as. How about a clockwork robot from series 2? Or a Weeping Angel? A Dalek costume could be rather harder to master however... but there is always the Master!
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If you don’t feel like getting the full fancy dress experience, you can buy cardboard masks quite cheaply – anything from the recent Doctors to Cybermen.

Food

This is where it gets really fun. You can create a whole menu based around Doctor Who and different characters. Lakeland has recently launched a set of baking products tied in to Doctor Who and I have to confess to having purchased a couple of things – the Dalek cupcake cases and toppers, and a set of Cyberman and K9 cookie cutters. If you are having a birthday party and want a centerpiece cake, check out this Dalek cake mould!

                But what to do if you are hosting a dinner party, and don’t just want cake? Here are some menu suggestions for a three course dinner party:

 

Starter/Appetizer: When the 11th Doctor (Matt Smith) regenerated, he was hungry and the young Amy Pond have him fishfingers dipped in custard. I think that's one flavour combination too far, but it would be fun to confuse your guests and set the theme for the rest of the dinner. So you could mix some yellow food colouring into a bowl of mayonnaise and set out a platter of fish fingers for people to help themselves while they wait for the main course.

Main course: K9 hot dogs, with baked potatoes. Serve the baked potatoes in foil mince pie cases, and if you can, get an edible ink pen to draw on a face… lo and behold you have Strax!

Dessert: Dalek cupcakes and Cybermen cookies using these sets from Lakeland.

 

And to drink: Sonic Screwdrivers! A screwdriver is a vodka and orange cocktail and it’s up to you how you jazz it up to make it ‘sonic’! Don’t forget to provide soft drinks for your guests as well.

 

Entertainment

I’m sure you all know that game where you write a character or famous person’s name on a label and stick it to someone’s forehead, then they have to ask questions and work out who they are? This game is perfect for Doctor Who fans – you can make it as hard as you like, whether you focus on the different Doctors and their assistants (I was a big fan of Ace as a child), or characters from the more recent series, or any of the aliens Doctor Who has met on his travels. I think it would be fun to make someone the Tardis itself and see how long it takes them to work that out!

Another dinner party game that is good either as an ice breaker or to fill time between courses is to put the Doctors’ assistants in the right order. You can find a list of them easily on line, but don’t make it too hard – maybe limit the list to 10 or a dozen rather than all of them!

 

And of course, watch as many episodes of Doctor Who as you can... my dinner party will revolve around watching the 50th anniversary episode, but you could have a retro episode marathon, or watch the first ever black and white episodes (you can find them on Amazon) or pick your personal favourites.

 

I am entering this in the Come Dine with Furniture Choice blogger competition

Disclaimer: This post is not affiliated to the BBC, Doctor Who or Lakeland.