Tuesday Tastings: Quick & Easy Appetizers

Today, Los Angeles Pierce College's radio station KPCRadio.com celebrated one year of broadcasting. Mel is the Communications Director of KPCRadio.com and for the first anniversary she was designated the task of providing appetizers for guests.

We tried to accomplish this feat hoping to find simple yet inexpensive recipes.

After resorting to a few quick searches on the web we decided on making deviled eggs, individual jello cups, a scallion spread for crackers, a platter of croissant sandwiches, sparkling lemonade and purchased a vegetable platter.

The sparkling lemonade combined sparkling apple cider, club soda, lemonade concentrate, slices of lemonade and ice.

Water crackers with a spread are an easy option. Mel chopped scallions and mixed them into cream cheese. We found that after a couple hours of refrigeration the scallion flavor set into the cream cheese and the spread was more flavorful. This was quite good and really simple with just two ingredients!

We boiled eggs, sliced them in half, took out the yellow middle and mixed it in a bowl with a few other ingredients. Not very difficult to make at all.

Jello is definitely one of the most inexpensive desserts one could make. It really doesn't require much work. You just let it sit in the refrigerator.

We made the jello in disposable cups in order to avoid a messy situation and also strive for a tasteful presentation.

Funny thing is, we had never made jello. We learned quickly through trial and error. Initially, we made a sheet of blue colored jello hoping to create flower cutouts with a cookie cutter. This did not turn out at all as planned. The flowers immediately fell apart.

In hopes of creating something presentable we cut strawberries and attempted to shape them into flowers. We were able to achieve this. It took three layers of the same flavored jello for the strawberries to set (if you completely cover the pieces, they will float to the top and you won't have a flower).

In order to have the strawberries in the center of the cup we poured a layer of jello that filled about half of the cup. After that solidified, about 3 hours later we put the cut strawberry pieces in the cups and poured enough jello to partly cover the strawberries. We let that second layer solidify. Later, we were able to add a third and final layer that completely covered the strawberries.

The cups were topped off with whipped cream.