Recipe Ideas for Mother’s Day Brunch

Mother’s Day and brunch go hand-in-hand, but restaurants are extra busy and it can be tough to make a reservation. We enjoy having a meal together at home or my parents’ house with family. Almost all of these recipes are semi-homemade, so either the moms can take a break from cooking and let the guys handle the meal, or the moms can choose to make simpler food for their special holiday. I hope these recipe ideas for Mother’s Day brunch are helpful!

Appetizers

All of the photos in this post were taken by JLT Photography. Party styling by Ashley Cash of The Graceful Host 

Cheese Tray

This blog post has a basic formula for how I put together a cheese and charcuterie tray. I purchase everything from Trader Joe’s, because they have a great variety of cheeses and crackers, and the prices are much more affordable. I borrowed some extra berries from the fruit tray, used dried figs that I cut in half, added some of the rosemary cashews and almonds (details below), and placed sprigs of fresh rosemary and thyme for garnish.

Fruit Tray

My tips for putting together a beautiful fruit tray are in this post!

Sweet and Spicy Rosemary Roasted Cashews and Almonds

These can be made a few different ways. I used to make them with butter and brown sugar, but they can also be made with coconut oil and maple syrup. Here is the recipe for the healthier version (which is just as delicious!). If you’d like the original recipe, you can find it here. I’m not sure what happened to the picture in the original recipe, but they look the same.

Vegetable Tray with Green Goddess Dip

Try to pick seasonal vegetables. Spring vegetables are some of the prettiest, so this tray is perfect for the season. I used:

-sugar snap peas, raw
-asparagus, raw, cut the bottom 2 inches off
-radish, raw, some sliced, some quartered from the top down, leaving a little bit of the stem on top for some green
-watermelon radish, raw, sliced in thin halves, found at Harris Teeter
-colorful baby carrots, raw, found them at Trader Joe’s
-endive leaves
-yellow summer squash, raw, sliced at a diagonal
-French green beans, lightly steamed
-orange bell pepper
-English cucumber, sliced at a diagonal
-broccoli
-cauliflower

Garnish:
-fresh thyme
-fresh rosemary

The watermelon radish is one of Josephine’s go-tos for cheese trays, too, and is so beautiful when cut open. I love the vibrant pink hues that radishes add to a vegetable tray.

Who knew green goddess dip would be so addicting?! Josephine made this for the event, without the feta, and it was still so delicious. I made it again for my family, using goat’s milk yogurt and sheep’s milk feta, and I did not have mint, and it was still so good. I would use mint next time, though. We enjoyed ours with some grilled salmon, and plenty of veggies. You can make this the day before serving.

Here is the link to the dip recipe. 

Whipped Feta with Pita

I’m hoping that Josephine is going to share this recipe soon, because everyone loved it!! We also had fun adding edible flowers to everything, but look how beautiful this is!

Flowers courtesy of Spruce and Co.

Blackberry Cucumber Caprese Skewers

These are simple and very semi-homemade, but the presentation is chic and colorful. I diced cucumber, used fresh blackberries, marinated mini mozzarella balls from Trader Joe’s, and a fresh basil leaf. Add the cucumber, then mozzarella, then basil, then blackberry to a skewer like this one, and then drizzle with some balsamic glaze.

Pimento Cheese BLT Croissants

Party food like these sandwiches are the best, because they are always a crowd-pleaser, yet they take minimal effort. I used basic BLT ingredients: bacon, roma tomatoes, mayonnaise, and romaine lettuce, then added Palmetto Cheese brand pimento cheese, and frozen mini croissants from Trader Joe’s. I saw on The Sarcastic Blonde recently that Williams Sonoma also has fantastic frozen croissants. You could use pre-baked croissants as well. If you use the large size, simply cut them in half.

To assemble, open the croissants so that you have the top and bottom pieces beside each other. On all of the bottom pieces, add a good amount of pimento cheese. To all of the top pieces of croissant, spread a thin layer of mayonnaise. On the pimento cheese, add a piece of lettuce, then 2 slices of roma tomato (seeds removed if possible), and then half a slice of cooked bacon. Add the top piece of croissant, then hold together with a skewer.

“Bagels and Lox” Bites

Because this was a brunch meal, I wanted to incorporate a smoked salmon appetizer. I made two versions so that one would be gluten free. For the regular version, I bought mini bagels, opened them up, and toasted them. Trader Joe’s has gluten free crispbread, which is what I used for the gluten free version. I broke them in half and I liked how the rough edges looked.

The toppings were the same for both. If you’d like these to be dairy-free, try using dairy-free cream cheese. I spread cream cheese on the bagel and crispbreads, added a few leaves of arugula, 3 thin slices of cucumber, smoked salmon, very thinly sliced red onion, a few capers, a sprig of fresh dill, and a shake of the Everything But the Bagel seasoning from Trader Joe’s. Whole Foods also carries a version of this seasoning.

For presentation, I laid this out on some fresh chives.

Drinks

Rhubarb 75 Cocktail

I don’t know many girls who don’t like a French 75. It is pretty, light-tasting, and topped with champagne! This rhubarb 75 is similar, but made with a homemade rhubarb syrup, which gives the pink color, and the rhubarb ribbon is one of the coolest cocktail garnishes I’ve seen. You will need a mandolin to slice the rhubarb, but you can also use that for the cucumber and onion for the smoked salmon appetizer! I tried using a peeler for the rhubarb, but the mandolin worked much better.

To make the garnish ahead of time: I washed the rhubarb, set the mandolin to a thin setting, and sliced it very carefully. Then I shocked the pieces in a large bowl of ice water. Then I added them to a glass storage container lined with a paper towel. I curled them and laid them on the paper towel in the curls so that they’d twist into the champagne flutes.

The rhubarb syrup was made ahead of time, and the lemons could also be juiced ahead of time. We multiplied the recipe and mixed up all of the ingredients, besides the sparkling (we used cava), and stirred it in a pitcher. Then we added the mix of rhubarb syrup, gin, lemon juice to a glass, topped with cava, and added a rhubarb ribbon.

Here is the link to the full recipe.

Doc Porter’s, based in Charlotte, was kind enough to donate the gin for this cocktail.

The cocktail is slightly more complicated than the rest of the recipes, but you could always make a mimosa to keep it simple! We also put together another very simple cocktail, seen below.

Grapefruit Rose Spritzer

I made this cocktail last summer while we were on vacation at the beach, because it is light, girly, and very low-calorie. This refreshing, slightly pink drink would also be perfect for Mother’s Day. You simply mix Ketel One Botanicals Grapefruit and Rose with grapefruit Spindrift and add a slice of fresh grapefruit. Serve over ice and enjoy.

Brittany is toasting with the grapefruit rose spritzer.

I need to do a separate post with the sweet treats and desserts. I’m going to do my best to make the cake again to figure out the measurements. I have had some requests for the recipe, but I sort of winged it, so I bought the ingredients to make it again.

I hope you all have a wonderful week, and that you are able to celebrate the moms you love most in your lives, and remember well those you have lost. This holiday used to be gut-wrenching for me during our years of infertility. If you are a woman who is yearning so badly to be a mom, I understand, and I am going to be praying especially hard this week for my friends struggling to have babies. You are on my heart as we go into Mother’s Day.

If you decide to make any of these as you celebrate or host next weekend, will you tag me in a picture on instagram? Those posts truly mean so much to me!