Birthday Supper. 1.
In the cake put a gold penny, a silver four-leaf clover, and a little image or amulet to drive away bad luck. Wrap them in paraffine or waxed paper or coat them with paraffine before putting them in the cake. Ask each one to make some birthday wish as the birthday person cuts his slice of cake. Place the cake on a table wreathed in greens or flowers or on a flower-trimmed tray. As many prefer scarlet carnations, this flower and red candles will make a pretty party. Just after supper pass the loving cup filled with claret, or fruit punch or cider. Each guest takes a sip to the health of the host. If your guests enjoy cards, let them play bridge, euchre, cinch, hearts, or the new card games in which figures are involved. If they do not care for cards a short program of old ballads by a good singer is always liked. As a surprise arrange a little series of funny tableaux showing the different birthdays of the guest of honor. To do this darken a room behind the players, and have a big screen for a background. No special stage properties are needed as the more ludicrous this is the more it will be enjoyed. Have some one at the piano play appropriate music for the different tableaux. For one year old have a baby in a cradle or in its mother's arms; for seventh birthday, a little boy starting to school with books and apple or candy; for the fourteenth birthday have a youth in sweater with football in arms rushing to the goal; have the twenty-first birthday represented by the young man courting, the twenty-eighth by the wedding; and for the thirty-sixth have someone dressed and made up as nearly like the guest of honor as possible.
For decoration have a frieze of ropes or smilax caught with scarlet ribbon. Cover the chandeliers with the greens and the shades with scarlet tissue paper. Bank the mantels with greens, having a mass of scarlet berries or flowers in the center of each. Red candles and shades on the mantels help the effect. If you have a table in the dining-room make the initials of the guest of honor in candles placed in a large wreath tied with scarlet ribbon. At each corner of the table have a single candle in a smaller wreath.
For supper serve a hot course, creamed oysters, or creamed sweetbreads and mushrooms, tiny hot buttered rolls and tiny pickles, chopped pickle or spiced peach, quince or pear, or brandied quince; chicken salad, or sweetbread salad on a lettuce leaf with cheese straws, stuffed olives, coffee, ice cream frozen in fancy forms, (leaves being a pretty design), and cakes in tiny squares with little red candies like scarlet berries on green or white icing.
Birthday Supper. 2.
Candles may be used for a centerpiece and also to outline the figures representing the number of years. A pretty ceremony, if you use candles on a birthday cake, is to have each guest light a candle with a wish for the guest of honor. When the cake is cut, blow out the candles and lift them off.
For the red color scheme, garnish the dishes with radishes, slices of tomatoes, red peppers, beet rings, candied cherries. Serve cream of tomato soup, tiny radishes cut in rose forms, wafers, salted almonds. Broiled lobster garnished with slices of fresh tomatoes and cucumbers.
Serve individual chicken pies baked in ramekins and served in red paper cases. In making these pies add mushrooms, potato marbles, white of hard-boiled eggs cut in rings and yolks cut in half. Make the cream sauce by using the liquor from the canned mushrooms, strong chicken stock and milk, thickened with flour. With this course serve a relish in red peppers, creamed peas, tiny hot rolls and a slice of sweet cucumber or watermelon pickle with a candied cherry on top. A beet salad garnished with rings of hard-boiled egg whites and the yolk run through a ricer, or chicken salad served in red peppers, tomato, cucumber and celery salad served in tomato shells, fruit salad served in red apples hollowed out. Serve wafers with the salad course. A pretty idea for the ice cream is to have it moulded in shape of candles with a little wick to be lighted just as it is brought to the table. Serve little square cakes with white icing and red bonbons. This menu gives two hot and two cold courses. Serve coffee or tea. At the close of the supper pass a loving cup of fruit punch, grape juice or wine, and ask each one to drink to the health of the guest of honor.
Birthday Party.
The guests are requested to represent, in some manner, their birth month.