Doctor Who 50th Anniversary Viewing Party

Copyright 2013 – Sweet Dreams Cake App/Michelle Davis – All Rights Reserved

It was a big day in our household on Saturday. If you are a follower of mine you probably remember that my oldest daughter is a huge Doctor Who fan. Last Christmas she won our local gingerbread competition with her gingerbread TARDIS and for her last birthday I made her a cake with the tenth doctor and Rose Tyler at the controls of the TARDIS. Anyone who is as huge of a Whovian as her knows that Saturday was the 50th anniversary of Doctor Who and it was celebrated with a live simulcast of a special episode titled “Day of the Doctor.” It was such a huge event that it broke the Guinness World record for the largest TV drama simulcast, broadcasting in 94 countries, across 6 continents.

My daughter had been counting down the days to this airing for months so I wanted to make it a special day for her and some of our other Whovian friends. The best way I know how to make any event special is to add some creative food. Doctor Who is such a fantasy filled show that it was easy to transform the theme and characters into a medley of edible creations. Many of my ideas came from other sources online so I have added links to the websites I used for ideas and recipes. Just click on the pink colored words to go to the various links.

The main food table was colored in blue and white, with white stars hanging from my chandelier to represent the stars of the universe that the Doctor travels through.

I made the stars by cutting various sizes of stars out of card stock and hot gluing them onto clear nylon thread which I then tied on to my chandelier.

The focal point of the food table was the veggie Dalek. Daleks are the robot like extraterrestrials in this photo below.

To create a Dalek out of vegetables I tried to figure out which vegetables were similar in size and shape to each of the Dalek’s features. I headed out to the grocery store and came back with an array of different colored squash, celery, carrots, tomatoes and black olives. I then pulled out the knife and some sturdy toothpicks and got to work. Here is the final creation.

Marshmallows made the perfect Adipose pops. The Adipose are the cute little marshmallow shaped beings composed almost entirely of fat.

The idea for these, along with a few of my other food items came from the Doodle Craft blog. I used large marshmallows then attached smaller marshmallows for the arms and legs, using some melted chocolate. I added a little more melted chocolate to a cookie pop stick then stuck it into the large marshmallow to turn it into a pop. The faces were drawn on with an edible marker.

Jelly Babies were a favorite candy of the fourth Doctor.

Unfortunately they aren’t a candy that’s easy to find here in the U.S., especially in small town Montana, so I had to go with the next best thing, Gummy Bears. I placed a sign on them that said Jelly Babies and we just used our imaginations.

Fish fingers and custard were a dish enjoyed by the eleventh Doctor shortly after his regeneration.

Admittedly this sounded pretty gross to me but I was determined to keep things as close to accurate as possible so I made some homemade custard then heated up some fish sticks and put them together in little paper dessert cups. Surprisingly they weren’t too bad, in fact my daughter thought they were quite good.

Jammie Dodgers were another fond treat of the Doctor. He ate them in several different episodes, including an episode in which he tried to fool the Daleks into believing that one was a self destruct button for the TARDIS.

Assuming that these were another sweet that could only be purchased in the UK, I decided to make my own. It wasn’t until after I made them that I learned they could be purchased locally at World Market. The recipe I used turned out wonderful though so I think they were worth the extra time and effort.

The eleventh Doctor is known for his bow tie so I made a bowtie pasta salad in his honor.

The Doctor’s bow tie:

My bowtie pasta salad; made with bowtie pasta, grape tomatoes, steamed broccoli, black olives, mozzarella cheese and seasoned with dried basil, salt and balsamic vinaigrette.

There is a well known scene in which the tenth Doctor tells his companion, Rose, “Always take a banana to a party, Rose. Bananas are good.” Well this was a party so we had to be sure and have some bananas.

The dimension through which the TARDIS passes through while time traveling is called the Time Vortex. Here is a picture of the TARDIS entering the Time Vortex:

The best thing I could find to represent the Time Vortex were these wonderful little tasty Swirled Sugar Cookies. They were really fun to make and I thought they would also make a great Christmas cookie if you colored the dough red instead of blue and used red and green sprinkles.

The highlight of the whole food table, at least I thought, were the cupcakes I made, representing a unique feature of each of the eleven Doctors and a special twelfth one added for the soon to be introduced, twelfth Doctor.

I made chocolate cupcakes with chocolate fudge icing then used modeling chocolate to create the following toppers:

First Doctor: Cane
Second: Recorder
Third: Cape
Fourth: Colorful Scarf

Fifth: Celery
Sixth: Cat Pin
Seventh: Umbrella
Eighth: Pocket Watch

Ninth: Leather Jacket
Tenth: Converse Shoe
Eleventh: Fez and Bow Tie
Twelfth: Not yet known….

Of course the TARDIS had to make and appearance on the table so we displayed my daughter’s TARDIS teapot among the food.

The drink table included a punch recipe that I got from BBC America for Sonic Screwdriver Punch.

We drank our punch with Plasmavore straws,

Just like the blood-sucking humanoid Plasmavore

If a party is even remotely British, it has to include a pot of tea.

And finally, we all needed party hats of some sort so I made us each a fez to wear.

We may not have looked quite as dashing as Matt Smith did in his fez,

But I think they turned out pretty cute.

I hope your weekend was as much fun as ours. Now we get to countdown to the Doctor Who Christmas special!

Until next time, God Bless and Sweet Dreams.