3 WICKED hacks for your Murder Mystery Dinner Party (without the dinner sshh..!)

The WhoDunnit Dinners team loves a dinner party! But do we always love to host a dinner party? Nope. 

The Christmas and New Year season are busy. Sometimes too busy. And while we really want to get our friends or family around for an evening of fun, the effort of cooking a whole meal can be quite daunting, not to say exhausting. 

So let’s suggest a cheat’s version. We will try to make it as easy as possible and make this a recipe free zone, because recipes can sometimes be stressful. 

Our WhoDunnit Dinners murder mystery games are written to be played in four sections (scenes or courses) and we find this works really well for a two hour evening and a three course meal. But of course, for those without the energy or time, an alternative to a murder mystery dinner party can just as easily be four rounds of drinks and nibbles. 

So these are our suggestions for a fabulously festive murder mystery drinks party, which doesn’t compromise on fun or sense of occasion. 

The key is providing some fun, festive nibbles to go with your drinks, to make more of an event of it, but without having to actually cook. 

1. First - you want to choose Christmas colours for your snack food - bright or dark red, green, white or sparkly. This gives you quite a lot of options: red: tomatoes, peppers, apples…; green: cucumber, basil, pesto, peppers, sprouts…; white: mozzarella, cream cheese, halloumi, icing sugar and so on. You get the idea. 
2. Next, include festive  symbols: snowballs, wreaths, snowmen, Christmas trees and candy canes. (A bit of icing sugar popped through a sieve over a batch of shop-bought biscuits to give the appearance of snow goes a LONG WAY to making you out to be the host with the most.) 
3. Finally - or as an alternative to the first two hacks - consider festive flavours - traditional flavours of turkey, cranberry or salmon, cheeses, mince pies or little sausages - and serve them one at a time through the rounds of the script. 

We assume you’ll have some decorations up and the Chrstmas music playing loud and proud!

So if we were playing one of our games (probably our latest Christmas murder - Have yourself a Merry Little Murder - or an NYE one like The Spy who came in with a Cold) this is an example of how we’d do it, using hacks 1) and 2), the festive colours and symbols.

We start with fizzy fun - alcoholic or non-alcoholic prosecco, champagne or cava - while we read the ‘drinks round’ from the script. Once the round is over we bring out the mozzarella balls, cherry tomatoes and basil on sticks.

After we’ve enjoyed a few of those, move on to a cocktail or winter mocktail and read Round 1. As it comes to a close, we share our festive wreath of (shop bought) blinis, covered with a combination of cream cheese, cherry tomatoes, basil, pesto and cucumber.

We might want to stay with the fizz or cocktails while we read Round 2 in the script. Then we’d have ourselves a merry little Christmas biscuit - ok you might need a recipe if you want to make the candy cane ones we have shown below - or just substitute for winter cupcakes, mince pies or Christmas chocolates.

Finally, a sherry, red or mulled wine while we enjoy the accusation round and then read the final round to find out whodunnit, before we indulge in a winter cheese and fruit and berry selection.

A murder mystery evening to remember without the stress! Make the most of your festive fun with family and friends, however you choose to enjoy it.