Here at Tempted Temple, we absolutely love all the creativity that comes with party planning and holidays. What we don’t love are the absurd amounts of sugar, unclean ingredients, and other harmful items that usually accompany festivities. Our goal for this ongoing series of SIMPLE CELEBRATIONS is to share ideas, inspiration, and recipes that stick to our lifestyle goal of being planet friendly, enjoying real food, and practicing intentional living.
For a little frozen fun that is easy to prepare ahead of time, we’ve gathered a few of our favorite ideas that light our fire(works).
Poppin’ with Patriotism
These stunning champagne floral ice buckets are total showstoppers. The best part: they are super easy to make. The bucket molds can be bought from various places. Find a DIY version here
If you use this for champagne or wine, we suggest opting for a clean, organic biodynamic brand that won’t give a headache the next day, such as our favorite. However, don’t discount using the bucket for keeping something other than alcohol. You can use an empty bottle to hold a mixture of a mocktail, carbonated water, or juice instead. What about a cup with popsicles, fruit kabobs, cake pops or fruit salad?
Ice Ice Baby, These Are Easy
Ice cubes are almost too easy to make festive. You can do this the morning of your event. Grab your ice cube tray and gather a mixture of red and/or blue berries, pomegranate seeds, dried fruit, flowers, or whatever you have available. Place them in each cube slot of the tray before filling with water and placing in the freezer. Within a couple of hours, you’ll have an instantaneous patriotic drink. Take it up a notch by using star-shaped or linear (stripe-like) ice cube molds!
Star of the show
Use a star cookie cutter to shape pineapple, jicama, watermelon, or another kind of fruit into stars for a fun statement. These stars can be put on cake pops, kabob sticks, used as straws to sit inside a cool drink, put in a fruit salad, or used as dessert decorations. They are so versatile, fun, and crazy-easy to make.
Booming Berry Tart
This delicious treat is gluten free, paleo, Gaps Approved, vegan (if honey is substituted), and dairy free if using coconut or cashew cream*.
Serves 6-8
Ingredients
Crust
1 cup soaked or crispy walnuts
1 cup dried shredded coconut
Filling
2 tablespoons raw honey
2 Cups of your choice; cultured cream (for the dairy tolerant), coconut cream, or cashew cream cheese (see recipe below)
Fruit
Fresh in-season berries of choice; blueberries, blackberries, raspberries, strawberries, cherries, elderberries, boysenberries, mulberries, etc.
Place all crust ingredients in a food processor and pulse until a paste is formed. Spread and press evenly into an 8” tart pan. Place in the fridge for 30 minutes to harden.
For the filling, fold honey into the cream of your choice. Spread on crust and let freeze for another 30 minutes.
Select your fruit and enjoy placing it on top in a decorative way.
*This recipe is derived and modified from the Heal Your Gut Cookbook
Cashew Cream cheese recipe
Here is a simple cashew Cream cheese recipe that can be used for other things like cracker spread or stuffed strawberries as well.
Wondermelon Cake
Have you seen pictures of watermelon cakes floating around the internet? . It’s simply fruit, but presented in a way that makes a fantastic substitute for traditional cake. Slice the skin off the watermelon, cutting it into a circular cake-like shape. Use toothpicks to decorate the top of the “cake” with other colorful fruits. Add some sparklers, beeswax candles, or our star wands to top it off. Here is our favorite version by @Dcgraze on Instagram.
Liberty Loaf
Are you making a healthy cake, and want to ditch the sprinkles? Try using dried fruit to decorate. We found organic dried blueberries and strawberries made an adorable alternative when making this Simple Mills vanilla cake in a loaf pan. We added ½-1 cup coconut shreds into the batter for a little extra sparkle.
Patriotic Parfait
Got leftover cake? Invite the kids to help make a patriotic parfait!. Here, we used Simple Mills matching frosting, but you could also use the cashew cream cheese recipe above.
Berry Board
If you need to keep it extra simple, try this berry board by @allthingspretty on Instagram. Charcuterie boards always make everything better and this minimal one does not disappoint.
The sky's the limit. Think outside the box and focus on choosing wholesome ingredients. It is possible to nourish our bodies while celebrating in style.