Christmas Finger Food Ideas for a Standing Party

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.

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 Christmas canape guide works through them properly.

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, and make roughly 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.

One more number worth having: about one third of what you put out will be eaten in the first 40 minutes. Hold a tray back rather than putting everything out at once.

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.

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.