I loved, loved how this theme dinner turned out! There have only been a couple of themes that haven’t really worked or that one part of the theme night hasn’t been a hit by the girls. Usually it involves coconut in the drink or cream cheese in the dessert. But this one was easy to put together and combinations of food items I know the girls would like. If you are unaware of the movie itself, it follows a newly hired night watchman at the Museum of Natural History in NYC. At night the displays come to life due to this magical Egyptian tablet. It’s funny and a really cute movie in which the girls enjoyed. And it had a really good cast of actors/actresses- to name a few Ben Stiller, Owen Wilson and Robin Williams.
There are many different areas of history within this movie, so you can choose many ideas. In one scene, the miniature figurines of cowboys and Romans are next to each other and every night they rage war on each other. So we decided on Cowboy Chili as our main meal. Since this was still in late winter when we watched this movie, it was still somewhat cold outside to enjoy. You can make your Cowboy chili the original way or you can just add whatever you have around the house. For our chili, we also wanted to reference the Easter Island Statues in the movie, so we ended up making Easter Island baked potatoes. We carved out faces on the potatoes and baked them in the oven. Once done, they were either topped by the chili or eaten separately. We had all the toppings too, onions, cheese and sour cream. Overall a win for us!
As a side for our chili, we usually have corn bread. So I turned the corn bread into our own Tablet of Ahkmenrah. I made the corn bread like normal (I also talked about using a tombstone baking cake pan I had, but I ended up just using a 8*8 pan) and my original idea was to make the carvings directly into the bread. That didn’t work very well as corn bread is pretty crumbly, so I cut some parchment paper and drew my symbols on that with an edible marker I have. Then I placed that directly onto the corn bread. Turned out just as well and girls thought it was fun!
Our drink turned out to be the biggest hit. I did have to do some prep work for it, but it was delicious none the less. We created Dum Dum Bubblegum Martinis. One of the Easter Island heads in the movie wants Dumb Dumb (that’s what he calls Ben Stiller’s character) to get him GumGum in the movie. The day before I grab both Dubble Bubble gum and Dum Dum lollipops (specifically wanting the bubblegum flavor). With the gum, I made a bubblegum simple syrup- that consisted of boiling the gum for the flavor in the simple syrup. The gum did ruin my pot, so watch out. Then with the Dum Dum lollipops, I froze them in water (still with the sticks) to create the ice cubes for the drinks. Then when it was time to create the drink, we added simple syrup, vodka and some soda water. The girls had the simple syrup and some sprite and all were topped off with a Dum Dum bubblegum ice cube! I didn’t think I was going to like the bubblegum flavor, but it was actually really good. Definitely worth a try!
I also had to do a little prep work with the cake for this theme. I wanted to make a dinosaur bone cake in reference to the T-Rex in the movie and thankfully after rummaging through our things, I found mini dinosaur bone molds. It was not a T-Rex, but it worked. I bought the white chocolate and melted it, then poured them into the molds, then froze them for a bit to harden. I wasn’t the best at this and they were really hard to get out of the molds. But they looked like dinosaur bones and that is all that matters. I then baked a chocolate cake and my own chocolate whipped frosting and crumbled up some Oreos for the dirt. Then placed the bones on top for a delicious Dinosaur Bone Chocolate Cake.
Tell me what you thought of this themed dinner! If has been one of my favorite so far.
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These are my opinions, and not necessarily the same opinions of any organization I am affiliated with. Because I’m always adding new content to my blog, I may change my mind about a few older topics. I am not responsible for the comments my readers leave and I have the right to delete comments. The content on my blog is generated for entertainment and informative purposes, but not to be perceived as professional advice. Lastly, I am not offering any endorsements.
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