Christmas Finger Food Ideas, Nibbles and Canapes

By Vicki Richards, National Customer Manager at The Gourmet Pantry.

The best Christmas finger food passes one test: it can be eaten with one hand, because the other one is holding a drink. That rules out anything needing a plate, a fork or two bites of concentration. What is left is a short list, and most of it is filled pastry cases, crisp flatbread with something thick on it, and good nuts.

This page covers the whole standing-party course: the nibbles tray before lunch, canapes, party food for twenty, and the snacks worth buying rather than making.

The one-handed test

A standing party is not a dinner with the chairs taken away. Every guest has a glass in one hand from the moment they arrive, so the food has to work with the other hand alone: no plate, no fork, and no second trip to a serving spoon.

Four things make a piece fail. It needs cutting, so someone has to put their drink down. It arrives with a skewer or a tail and there is nowhere to put the rubbish. It falls apart between bite one and bite two. Or it needs two hands, which is why shot glasses of chilled soup photograph beautifully and get abandoned on the windowsill.

Nearly everything else on the usual Christmas list survives. Our tart and pastry shells exist because of this exact problem: a pre-baked case is the only reliable way to get a wet, hot-looking filling into a guest's hand without a plate under it.

Eight things that pass

1. Filled mini pastry cases. One bite, no leaking, no cutlery. The Confiletas mini savoury round pastry cases come 12 to a pack at $9.95 and arrive already baked, so there is no pastry, no blind baking and no chilling time. Fill them close to serving. If you want filling combinations rather than logistics, the canape section below works through them.

2. Mini vol-au-vents. Same idea with sides and a lid, which means a filling with sauce in it stays where you put it. The mini vol-au-vent shells are also $9.95 for 12. Mushroom and thyme is the filling that quietly covers the vegetarians without being announced as the vegetarian option.

3. Flatbread shards with something thick on them. A cheese flatbread at $4.95 snaps into rough shards that hold their shape in a hand. The topping has to be stiff, not loose: Belazu black olive tapenade at $12.95 sits on a shard and stays there. Load them in the kitchen. A bowl of dip on a table is two-handed food, and it will not get eaten.

4. Good nuts, in several small bowls. Nuts are the only thing a guest will eat without deciding to, so they carry the first half hour on their own. Mr Filbert's Indonesian peppered cashews at $9.95 have enough pepper to be interesting next to a gin and tonic. Put out four small bowls in four places rather than one large one; nobody crosses a room for nuts.

5. Cheese, cut before anyone arrives. A whole wheel with a knife beside it is a lovely photograph and a bottleneck in practice. Cut it into cubes or wedges an hour ahead, take the knife away, and put a stack of crackers beside it rather than under it.

6. Cold prawns with the tails off. Tails are rubbish, and rubbish at a standing party ends up in a pot plant. Peel them fully, and send the sauce out in a small bowl on the same tray rather than one big bowl marooned at the end of the table.

7. Anything you can cut into squares. A cold frittata or a savoury tart in 3cm squares is the most forgiving thing here. It holds its shape for hours at room temperature, needs no reheating, and it is the piece that stops guests getting hungry.

8. One small sweet thing, late. Not a dessert; something that goes in whole. Chocolate thins, shortbread snapped into fingers, or a bowl from the snacking range. Put it out only after the savoury trays are down to crumbs, or it gets eaten first and nothing else does.

How many pieces per person

Two numbers, depending on what the finger food is for.

If a meal follows, allow 4 to 6 pieces per person across the first hour. The job is to hold people, not feed them, and anyone who eats eight canapes will not want lunch.

If the finger food is the meal, allow 10 to 14 pieces per person across two to three hours, two thirds of them savoury. For a party of 20 that is around 240 pieces, which is why the pre-baked shells matter more than the fillings do. We work the quantities through in how much food per person at Christmas.

What to do the day before

Almost all of it, and none of it needs the oven on the day, which matters more here than on the recipe sites written for a northern winter.

Fillings keep two days in a sealed container in the fridge: whipped cheese, chicken and tarragon, anything cooked down and cooled. Pastry cases stay in their box in the cupboard, which is the whole point of a shelf-stable shell. Nuts, crisps, flatbread and cheese get opened and arranged, not cooked.

The one real timing rule is when you fill a case. A wet filling goes in about 30 minutes ahead; longer than that and the base softens. A dry one, like a firm pate, sits happily for two hours. Fill half before guests arrive and the rest halfway through the night, and the second tray is noticeably better than the first.

Christmas nibbles: the no-cook tray before lunch

Nibbles are their own small course, and the mistake is treating them like a meal. They hold people for 40 minutes while the ham comes up to room temperature, and none of it needs an oven. Five bowls: salted nuts, olives tipped straight from the jar, one rich crisp, a cracker thin enough to disappear, and one sharp thing to spread. Kangaroo Island mediterranean olives at $7.95 need nothing done to them, and rosemary crackerthins at $2.99 a packet carry a spread without filling anyone up.

Keep it savoury; everyone in the kitchen at eleven knows a pudding is coming. For eight guests over an hour that is two 100g bags of nuts, one jar of olives, a canister of crisps, a packet of crackers and one small jar. Put it out 30 minutes before the first guests, and take it away when lunch is called.

Christmas canapes: pick the shell, then the filling

A canape is a one-bite savoury, and the fastest good ones start with a pre-baked shell and a jar. Every size in the tart and pastry shells range is $9.95 a pack, so the decision is shape rather than price: the 37mm mini savoury case is flat and wants a filling that holds its shape, while the 38mm mini vol au vent has a wall and a well, so it takes anything wet enough to slump.

Beat one part truffle and artichoke pesto at $12.95 into two parts cream cheese and pipe it into the flat cases, or spoon roasted red capsicum tapenade at $6.95 over whipped feta. Fill in batches as each tray goes out.

Christmas party food when you are feeding twenty

Twenty is the number where cooking stops being the answer. Buy most of it, make one thing, and spend the effort on the order it goes out in. Over three hours with no meal after, allow roughly 350g a head, most of it dry goods and cheese: four to five packs of crackers, three jars of olives, four packs of nuts, three canisters of crisps, two or three jars to spread, and 1.5kg to 2kg of cheese. Mini artisan crackers with sea salt at $4.95 are the base, small and rustic rather than the wide rounds that snap the moment someone loads them.

Send it out in three waves. Wave one is out before the first guest arrives, split across two boards in two rooms, because twenty people around one table becomes a queue. Wave two is the single hot thing an hour in, handed around rather than set down. Wave three waits in the cupboard until the room thins. The festive entertaining essentials range is the table side of the job.

Christmas snacks worth buying instead of making

Make what is better warm and buy what needs equipment. Sausage rolls out of your own oven are worth the afternoon; boiled lollies, brittle set on a cold slab and macadamias coated in honey are not, because those want a sugar thermometer and a fryer. Five that earn the bowl: Nutworks Manuka honey macadamias at $7.95, Hunter's black truffle crisps at $12.95 in a rigid canister so they arrive whole, Kangaroo Island honey popcorn at $7.95, caramelised cashew brittle at $12.95, and Sovereign Hill raspberry drops at $9.95, hand made in Ballarat.

Count packets, not grams: a 75g to 100g bag fills one small bowl. Sealed, all of it keeps in a cupboard until the day you open it, which makes this the one part of Christmas catering you can do in October.

Common questions

What finger food is best for a Christmas party?

Filled pastry cases, mini vol-au-vents, loaded flatbread shards, cut cheese, peeled prawns, squares of cold frittata and bowls of seasoned nuts. All of them can be eaten with one hand while the other holds a glass, none of them needs cutlery, and only two of them need any cooking at all. Skip anything served on a skewer unless you have somewhere for guests to put it.

How many pieces of finger food per person?

Four to six pieces per person if a meal follows, spread across the first hour. Ten to 14 pieces per person if the finger food is the meal, spread across two to three hours, with about two thirds savoury and one third sweet. Buy for the higher number if your guest list skews young or the party starts before 6pm.

What finger food can be made the day before?

Every filling, and nothing that involves pastry sitting in a fridge. Make cheese, seafood and vegetable fillings up to two days ahead and keep them sealed and cold. Leave shelf-stable pastry cases in their box until the day, then fill wet mixtures about 30 minutes before serving and drier ones up to two hours ahead.

Before the party

The pastry is worth ordering in advance, because it is the one thing here you cannot pick up on the way home. Our tart and pastry shells keep for months, so a box bought in November is still doing its job on New Year's Eve. Shipping is free Australia-wide on orders over $100, and orders placed before 12pm on a weekday leave our Corio warehouse the same day. That is dispatch, not delivery, so give yourself a few days on either side of the party.

For the rest of the table, our guide to Australian Christmas food covers the whole day.