How do caterers help you to get the perfect balance of flavours, variety and ingredients in the canapés at your wedding or event? We get some behind the scenes info from Kalm Kitchen’s Head of Events, Pete Holder on how to pick the perfect canapés for your event or wedding.
You’ve just officially got married. You’ve exchanged your vows and all your guests are so filled with love and happiness for you. But, secretly and subtly, they are tactically working out which direction the canapés are going to enter from and the best place to stand to get first choice! So how can you choose from all those canapé choices, please everybody’s palates and ensure they are served with a bang?
How many canapés?
A great starting place is to work out how many canapés you are going to need. Kalm Kitchen’s Pete recommends “six canapés is a good place to start, giving a nice variety to circulate amongst your guests during the drinks reception. If your drinks reception is going to be longer than an hour and a half, we would recommend increasing your selection to nine or adding a grazing station”. This ensures there are plenty of perfectly mouth sized morsels mingling around your guests as everyone chats about your vows and how beautiful you looked!
Now you’ve got six to narrow it down to, how do you make the choice? “Kalm Kitchen would suggest selecting two meat, two fish, one vegetarian and one vegan canapé choice. This should ensure all your guests are satisfied for the duration of the canapé reception. However, it is completely up to you how you want to split the selection”. Wise words from Pete, and always remember, these aren’t aiming to completely satisfy your guests, instead tickle their taste buds in preparation for the feast that is the wedding breakfast.
Canapé ingredients and size
As bluntly emphasised many times by Cherise Finden on Channel 4’s Bake Off: The Professionals, canapés should never be bigger than a mouthful. No lady, looking beautiful in her best wedding outfit, wants to be tackling a giant Yorkshire pudding laden with horseradish and rare beef whilst trying her best to appear sophisticated. Neither too large or too small, Kalm Kitchen’s canapés are always perfectly bite-sized. Similarly, certain ingredients are forbidden from entering a chef’s recipe for the perfect canapé, to avoid the disaster of drippage! Pete comments, “It’s important that canapés hold together well, so any wet ingredients are usually in the form of a dip. It’s essential that canapés can be held with one hand and eaten in one or two bites maximum.”
How to display the canapés and serve them with style
As referenced in one of your other blog posts, Feast for the Eyes, the visual look of food can greatly influence a person’s perception of taste. So how do Kalm come up with new ideas for presentation and continue to wow the guests at Micklefield Hall? “We have the most gorgeous array of stylish trays to serve your canapés. These range from opulent vintage mirrors to stunning bird cages. Our event managers are also enrolled in an ongoing Canapé-Styling Floristry Course, where they are constantly creating and developing new ideas for canapé tray styling, to ensure your guests are always impressed.”
So that’s how they do it at Kalm, thanks Pete!
