Food ideas for a Lego Ninja, Japan themed Birthday

Homemade Fortune Cookies

Would it surprise you to find out that fortune cookies are Japanese-American and not Chinese? I certainly was! Read about its Japanese origins.

But you didn’t click here for a history lesson. My son wanted a Lego Ninjago birthday party for his 6th birthday and I made fortune cookies as a party game and as party food! They’re easy once you know how!

I used the recipe from The Spruce Eats.

Tips:

• Only bake 4 per pan. The rest will harden before you get to them.
• Have 3 pans going in the ovne, staggered a few minutes apart, so you can do a dozen cookies in one go.
• Immediately put the folded cookie into a muffin tin and it will hold its as it cools. Otherwise, it unravels. The cookies harden quickly so you can remove the dozen after five minutes to have the muffin tin ready for the next batch.
• It is a bit hot on your fingertips so you could wear cotton gloves if you have them.
• Alternatively, you can use a small spatula to do the initial fold over the paper fortune and it will cool a little during this process. When I did this with my kids, I picked up the fortune cookie for them and let it cool for about five seconds before handing it to them to fold over the edge of the glass measuring cup.

These would make FABULOUS Valentines. I used free Ninjago party gift tags by Over the Big Moon. You could just use the top half of the printable as a valentine.

I made these fortune cookies for my little guy’s Japan/Ninja themed party, putting customized verses inside. Since then, the little kids made a batch for the twins’ robotics team with encouraging notes on competition day. My little guy made special ones for me and my husband that said “I love you.”

The Cake

I took shortcuts on the birthday cake by using boxed cake mix. SIX boxes! I used a deep dish pizza pan, two layers of chocolate cake (4 boxes of mix) for the base. The top was also two layers. I used two 8-inch pans which took 2 boxes of vanilla cake mix. A friend gave me the tip to insert straws into the base to support the base of the top layer. Bubble tea to the rescue: I went to my favorite store that uses strong paper bubble tea straws and used those.

My little guy loves spotting groves of bamboo as we drive along. To simulate the bamboo, I broke pirouettes and stuck them all around the perimeter of the two cakes. I think it took almost 5 containers of pirouettes. Yup, that means I spent more on pirouettes than the cake!

The rest of the Party Food

We ordered two platters of an assortment of sushi from our favorite sushi place. Some of it was raw but most was not, for the kids.

My husband is amazing at making pizza from scratch. At my request, he made rectangular pizzas in a baking sheet. He lined up pepperoni in a grid and cut it into rectangles. Voila! Japanese Flag Pizza.

Another fun idea would be to make Japanese Flag Pizzas according to the recipe in the back of this kids book about Niki Nakayama, a Japanese-American chef. The recipe uses wonton wrappers that you can buy at the store and kids would be able to do it themselves.

I wanted to make this amazing Soba Noodle Salad by Just One Cookbook. My mom didn’t think I’d be able to make enough to satisfy so many guests, so I didn’t. She was absolutely right. Later that week, I did make the Soba Noodle Salad for my family of six and it was gone so fast. No leftovers!

There was other easy party food, not Japanese themed.