My daughter is convinced she’s a Unicorn and wears her Unicorn headband everywhere, including to soccer practice. 😉 So when it came to her 4th birthday party, we knew it was going to be a Unicorn Birthday Party! This was also the first time she was actually excited about her birthday and listed everything from the friends she wanted to invite to the kind of cake and cupcakes she wanted for her Unicorn Birthday. It was really very cute!

My friend Disha is a fabulous baker and I had no doubts that she will do justice to whatever cake design I send her. And I love that she does mine with icing since I’m not a fan of cakes covered in fondant. As you can see below, she did an amazing job! But, Unicorn themed food for the party was a whole another matter. It was time to get creative! I’ll also share my Unicorn return favours DIYs in a new post soon. You can also read some more birthday ideas by me here, here and here!😉

Unicorn Birthday Food – Menu

The menu for Karma’s Unicorn Birthday was simple and essentially included things that I knew all her friends liked to eat. A kids’ party should have kids’ food! There were around 20 children and I kept the menu small but made sure I had enough quantities of every food.

Menu:

• Spaghetti/Aglio Olio without chilli flakes
• Cream Cheese Sandwiches
• Mini Pancakes with potions (syrups)
• Fries
• Smileys (Favourite!)
• Cupcakes
• Birthday Cake

Unicorn Birthday Food – Recipes

Now that the menu is listed, let’s get down to how all this food was ‘Unicorned’! The easy answer is Food Colouring!

I’ll share the different processes for each recipe below and they’re all very simple ones. My apologies for not taking step-by-step photos but I promise, the instructions are easy to follow. I used icing colours since they were used for cake and cupcakes too. Karma’s whole gang included children from our society and her school and daycare. Hence, I knew none of the kids had any allergies to food colouring.

But if you don’t want to use icing colours, then you can use organic food colouring or make it naturally using beetroots (pink), spinach (green), turmeric (yellow), red cabbage (blue), blue berries (purple) & various others. You’ll find a lot of options online. Once your colours are ready (homemade or readymade), the recipes & processes shared below to ‘Unicorn’ the food is the same.

Unicorn Spaghetti/Aglio Olio

Or Rainbow Spaghetti – Whatever you wanna call it! 😉

• Boil regular spaghetti according to instructions on the packet and drain well.
• Divide spaghetti into equal number of portions as the number of colours. I used 4 colours so I divided the total spaghetti into 4 portions.
• Let the spaghetti dry properly. No oil or water left over or else colour will not settle. Don’t worry if it’s sticking to each other. That will get sorted at a later step when it’s tossed in olive oil.
• Then either use ziplock bags or do what I did since I didn’t have large size ziplock bags around. Take a steel or glass bowl. Put one portion of spaghetti and add a few drops of one colour. If you’re using naturally extracted colours, you might need to add more.
• Toss the spaghetti till it’s coated well. Add more colour if needed.
• Cover with cling wrap or wrap in cling wrap and put in the fridge for a few hours (or overnight if possible) so the colour settles well; otherwise it’ll fade/spread later when we prep the noodles.
• Do this individually for all portions using one colour for each.
• Once the colour has settled, take out one portion. Put some olive oil in a pan on low heat. Add some chopped garlic and toss the spaghetti till it’s coated in oil. Remove from heat and repeat with other coloured portions individually.
• Now add some oregano and toss the portions. I didn’t use chilli flakes since it’s for small kids and most of them don’t eat spicy food including my daughter Karma.
• Now it’s time to mix the different portions into one. Take small scoops from each portion and layer on top of each other in the serving bowl/dish. Toss together and then add more scoops. NOTE: The reason I wouldn’t recommend just tossing the whole thing together and mixing it because it will become too tangled. This way it mixes well, doesn’t get tangled and looks really pretty in the end.
• VOILA! Your Unicorn Spaghetti Aglio Olio is ready! 🙂

Rainbow Cream Cheese Sandwiches

This one is easier and takes less time.

• Take 4 portions of cream cheese (I used oregano cream cheese but you can use plain or flavoured). Add few drops of one colour into one portion.
• Mix well with a small fork or spoon. NOTE: It will take a few minutes of mixing for the colour to get blend well with the cream cheese. Repeat with other colours and portions.
• Slice off the edges of bread slices. Apply one colour on one slice. Add a plain slice on top. Apply a different colour on this one. Add another plain slice topped off with a third colour. And finally add one more slice.
• Then chop the sandwich into four parts.
• NOTE: Make sure you spread enough cheese spread near the edges so that it shows from between the slices. Or else, the colour pop won’t be as visible.

Unicorn Pancakes

• You can do this with your own pancake batter or a ready-mix. I used a ready-mix.
• Add water/milk and make pancake batter according to instructions on the pack.
• Divide batter into 4 equal portions. Add a couple of drops of colour into each portion individually. Mix well.
• Heat a pan on very low flame. Pour one table spoon of batter on to the pan & let it cook for a minute and flip. Cook for 30 seconds and take off heat. NOTE: Since the batter is bright coloured, browning the pancake will reduce the appeal of the colours. Hence, it’s easier to make small pancakes that cook faster without much browning, look cute and are easier to eat as well specially at a birthday party.
• Once you have tested the heat & time taken for one small pancake to cook, then you can start cooking multiple pancakes on one big pan.
• For serving, I poured chocolate syrup, strawberry syrup and caramel syrup in 3 glass bottles & titled them as ‘potions’ with tags to go with the theme. The kids jumped at the food as soon as laid it out so couldn’t take a close-up photo of that. LOL!

I couldn’t figure out a way to colour the fries and smileys so I just laid out coloured paper-cloth pieces in glass bowls for serving to add a pop of colour. We even tried to make rainbow popcorn but that idea flopped majorly! 😉 I am still keen on attempting that again so if anyone has any hacks around it, let me know!

Hope you guys liked the Unicorn Birthday Food Ideas and I really hope you will try them out for your child’s birthday. Let me know what you think in comments and don’t forget to PIN this post! I had a blast doing this for Karma’s Unicorn Birthday and the kids went crazy over the food! 🙂 It did mess with the adults’ minds a little bit though because it all looked sweet but tasted like regular food! Haha!