Get Togethers With Friends Which Won't Cost The Earth

Regular readers of my blog will no doubt know the following about me:

1. Ad and I are both big movie fiends. With the amount of trash on TV nowadays, is it any wonder?
2. I love food!
3. I love sweet food even more
4. NYE is traditionally spent at our house, going out is incredibly over-rated.

This year, number 4 was no exception and as per tradition, we were joined by our good friend Mr Y, his presence was a welcome distraction from the unfortunate incident whilst we were away for Christmas. 

Anyways, I digress, on a visit to Bournemouth, I'd come up with an idea which would tie together points 1-3. A themed movie night with matching cocktails, I was pleasantly surprised that everything worked together really well and was actually cheap and pretty effort free to pull off!

The three movies which we (by we, I of course mean the royal we) chose were The Breakfast Club as I'd never seen it before, Fight Club and The Big Lebowski. Our evening panned out like this:

Food: Vanilla cupcakes with a peanut butter and jelly ripple frosting

As a cheat I bought pre-made vanilla cupcakes which were £1 for 12 and iced them myself using a frosting recipe which I'd found on the net. Once the frosting mix was made up, I then painted jam inside my piping bag before filling with the frosting. This created a nice rippled effect throughout the frosting.

TIP - use smooth peanut butter as chunky peanut butter will clog up your piping nozzle!!

 

Cocktail: The Breakfast Club. I blitzed this in a blender with ice for speed.

For one cocktail you'll need: 

• 1 tablespoon of marmalade
• 1 tablespoon of honey
• 1 shot of rum
• 1 shot of orange liqueur
• 1 shot of black tea

Food: Nothing else will do except good old fashioned bar snacks! Crisps, sausage rolls and any other nibbles you want to get your mitts on!

Cocktail: Whilst a White Russian is the Dudes cocktail of choice, I thought this would be far to easy. As such I made something called Bite Me.

Traditionally you'll need:

• Orange Soda
• Root Beer (Sarsaparilla is hard to find in the UK)
• One shot of rum

However, I struggled to find root beer so, being creative (and knowing Root Beer is quite aniseed based) I soaked some star anise in the rum before topping the cocktail off with some orange Tango.

Food: Donuts! Krispy Kremes are the most fitting if you can get your mitts on them.

Cocktail: Starbucks Russian which I again blitzed up in a blender. Be warned, this one packs a serious punch!

You'll need:

• 1 shots of vodka
• 1 shot of coffee liqueur
• 1 shot of coffee
• 1 shot of baileys (or any other cream based liqueur)
• A diddy tub of Baileys Ice Cream (which was enough to be split between three of us!)

Overall, this was incredibly reasonable to pull together as we had most of the alcohol already in my cupboard, the only thing we need to get were the nibbles which cost about £15 making it a bargain night in.

What do you do for get togethers with friends when you're on a budget?