Published on December 11, 2014 | Last Updated on December 11, 2014

Earlier this week we showed you inspiration for holiday hostess style, now we’re going to talk about tips in the kitchen to make entertaing a breeze! One of our main goals at C&C is to allow the host(ess) to enjoy their event as a guest and we think our tricks can help make that happen for your Christmas dinner party too!

Sugared cranberries are one of our favorite things to make during the holidays. Not only are they pretty, but they’re SO easy to make ahead of time! Use them as a garnish to give a glass of bubbly a festive touch or on top of a simple white cake for dessert.

You can follow this recipe for sugared cranberries. It’s SUPER easy and only requires a couple ingredients. To save extra time, we used premade simple syrup we keep on our bar cart!

If you’re going to add them to champagne, wait until guests are arriving to do so. You want to keep the bottle of champagne in an ice bucket ice or in fridge as long as possible. The bubbles in the glass stop fizzing when it gets to room temp. When you’re ready to fill the glasses, wait for the glass to settle for a minute before adding the cranberries so it doesn’t overflow. We’ve found that out the hard way! 🙂

Baked brie is one of our favorite holiday appetizers and when we found a recipe for baked brie bites, we were all in! We love combining sweet and spicy together so we used Trader Joe’s Jalapeno Cranberry Sauce instead of regular cranberry sauce or chutney.

The brie will be best served warm so we don’t recommend making this ahead of time. They only need 5 minutes in the oven so pop them in right before your guests arrive. We added a couple sprigs of rosemary to add a little texture to the white serving platter.

We love, love, love simple white cakes! They’re so beautiful and versatile you can easily dress them up for any occasion. This cake is semi-homemade at it’s finest. We called ahead to H-E-B and asked for a 6 inch round white cake without icing. Homemade icing really makes a difference and we used a tried and true Martha Stewart recipe. When you’re ready to ice the cake, use a flat spatula to help achieve the smooth surface.

The sugared cranberries and rosemary sprigs add a super festive touch without spending hours on a made from scratch cake.

We hope our hostess tips and tricks make your lives a little easier this holiday season!

Photpgraphy: Michelle Able Photography | Location: The Martin Residence | Holiday Coasters: Manor | For outfit details, visit our previous blog post here.