A buffet bar of sweets alongside your savoury food buffet presents a fun and eye-catching alternative for birthday parties, wedding receptions, baptisms and bar mitzvahs.

Pour your sweets into boxes, baskets, jars, vases and any other container you think will work. Try placing them at different heights on your buffet table and surround them with decorations that match the theme of your party. Set it all up on a striking tablecloth for your guests’ enjoyment. Provide small gift bags or boxes so guests can take candy home as a favour after the party.

Match Your Colour Scheme

The beauty of sweets is the sheer number of colours they come in. Match your buffet to the colour scheme of your party using English or American sweets as required. Sugar coated sweets like M&Ms or foil wrapped ones like Hershey’s Kisses are ideal. Select all blue and white for a boys birthday or pink and white for a girl. Consider greens and browns for Halloween, multiple colours for Easter and red white and green for Christmas. Even weddings can benefit. For example, if you are staying with all white, choose white mints, and silver or gold foil wrapped sweets.

Match Your Party Theme

Sweets can match your party theme whether it is a birthday, Christmas or fancy dress party. For a space themed party, for example, choose Mars bars and Milky Ways, rum truffles can look like meteors and there is always Gobstoppers and other round sweets to act as planets! Include containers and table decorations that reflect the space theme through stars, suns, space ships and astronauts.

You could be having an American themed party in which case you will want a wide range of well-known American sweets, like Reese’s Peanut Butter Cups, Milk Duds, Baby Ruth’s, Tootsie Rolls and Twinkies.

Consider Your Flavours

Chocolate is always a popular sweet buffet flavour choice and could be created with truffles, miniature chocolate bars, moulded chocolates and chocolate covered raisins. Other flavours that would work with sweet buffets include citrus, cherry or mint.

Create height and drama on the table by arranging your sweet containers on decorated boxes wrapped in fabric or wrapping paper that is decorated with images of candy or mimicking the colours of the candy you have selected.

Use Your or Your Guests Personal Favourites

Base your sweet buffet on what you like best – or if it’s for a specific person, on what they like best. Select five to seven of the favourites pile them on your buffet. If the party is for many, ask around for everyone’s top three sweets and pile high with those!

You can really personalise your birthday or anniversary sweet buffets by adding photographs of the guest of honour to the buffet table in amongst the jars and boxes of sweets. Or, if it is a holiday such as Christmas or Halloween, add models of Santa, reindeer or Dracula and Frankenstein. Use your imagination and you’ll have a real talking point at your next party.

Believe it or not chocolate has been used as a drink for practically it’s entire history.  Archaologists working out in Honduras recently found evidence of the use of cacao which they estimated would date back to 1100 to 1400 BC, making it the earliest recorded use of chocolate to date.  The chocolate residue that was found indicated that the first use of chocolate was not just as a drink but the pup that was left behind led them to believe that it could have also been a source of fermentable sugars used for alcoholic beverages. 

You would have thought that the western world would be quick to latch on to chocolate however this was not the case.  In fact no European had ever heard of this popular south american chocolate drink until the 16th century.  We had to wait until the Spanish conquest of the Aztecs before chocolate began to be imported into Europe.  It quickly became a favourite of the Spanish nobility and became so popular that it spread round the rest of Europe.  In order to keep up with demand the Spanish army started to use slaves to help produce it.

When chocolate eventually reached British shores the story was entirely different.  It wasn’t considered a drink or food exclusive to the upper classes.  It was a treat that everyone could afford.  The very first chocolate house in England was opened in London in the mid 1600s.  The development of chocolate took a hige step forward towards the end of the 19th century when a chocolate drink developed in Jamaica was eventually sold to the Cadbury brothers who went on to become one of the world’s biggest names in chocolate manufacturing.

The production techniques involved in the manufacture of chocolate stayed the same for hundreds of years, however by the time of the industrial revolution many changes were made that lead to the type of chocolate which we enjoy today.  Mechanical mills were built that squeezed out cocoa butter which helped to create a type of chocolate which was harder and more durable.  As the industrial revolution progressed these mills were put to ever greater use.  These production techniques eventually spread to the rest of the world, allowing everyone to buy and enjoy the wonderful taste of chocolate.

This article was written on behalf of www.americansoda.co.uk, a leading UK importer of American Sweets.

Christmas is undoubtedly a time for indulgence and the sharing of gifts. Given these hard financial times however, you may be put off buying too many presents, but that doesnt mean that you cant make some lovingly created Christmas treats at home. Below are some great sweet recipes from IWOOT. (more…)