Game Day Party Snacks

Game day calls for a feast that fuels the excitement of rooting for your favorite team. When it comes to game day party snacks, your guests want to celebrate the touchdowns with familiar favorites. Try these recipes for classic game day fare without the junk food guilt.

Dips

Chips and dips are a natural for game day, but skip the processed tubs from the refrigerator section of the grocery store. Whip up your own for better flavor and quality ingredients. Choose a base, such as sour cream, softened cream cheese or mayonnaise, and flavor it with fresh herbs and spices. Pulse together goat cheese and dried cranberries in your Vitamix blender, or mix bacon and blue cheese with sour cream and mayonnaise. Try pureeing white beans with lemon juice, garlic, rosemary and olive oil. Serve with crackers, small rounds of French bread or cut-up vegetables. Other dip options include standbys such as hummus, salsa, guacamole — which comes out extra smooth when you use a Vitamix blender — and seven-layer dip.

Wings and Dogs

Guests expect chicken wings on game day, and baked wings contain less fat than fried ones. Make a homemade sauce in your Vitamix blender, such as an Asian buffalo sauce. Soak the raw chicken wings with half your sauce in a large bowl for 20 to 30 minutes, or marinate overnight. Place the wings on a foil-lined baking sheet and send them into the oven, about 8 inches from the heat. Cook for 20 minutes, flipping halfway through. Toss the finished wings with the remaining sauce and serve immediately.

Complement the wings with mini cocktail sausages wrapped in small strips of crescent dough — you can even call them “pigskins.” Bake at 350 F until the crescent dough is cooked through and lightly browned.

Pizza and Quesadillas

Use your Vitamix blender to prepare thin crust pizza dough to form small rounds of about 3 to 4 inches. Top with marinara sauce and shredded mozzarella, or go for alternative flavors such as pesto and goat cheese. Try barbecue sauce, Gouda and chunks of chicken for another variation, or a puree of roasted peppers and caramelized onions with fontina cheese.

Serve quesadillas made with classic ingredients such as corn tortillas, cheddar cheese, and black beans or chicken. Cut into triangles for snack-size portions.

Sweet Treats

Sweeten up game day with some themed treats. Use a football-shaped cookie cutter on plain sugar cookie dough and decorate to look like mini footballs. Create a game-day pull-apart cake by clustering cupcakes together and icing them to look like one big football. Guests can remove one cupcake at a time without having to wait for a cake to be cut.