It's my favorite time of the year! Halloween!
For me, Halloween has always just been a time to be creative. It's not so much about scary and creepy, but... it is more fun when it's scary and creepy! Last year I prepared three halloween-themed desserts using gummy worms, so this year I'm going to share with you a few more ideas of quick and easy-to-make halloween-themed food/snacks. Someone helped me with this - it took us about 5-6 hours to prepare the following for our "life after death" devotional gathering:
Appetizer: Deviled Eggs
Boil some eggs (for around 8 minutes) then peel the shells off and cut in half. Scoop out the yolk and put in a bowl. Add some mayonnaise, chopped chives, some salt and pepper and mix until it's almost paste-like, then place it all in a piping bag. Press the mixture into the egg whites. The spider is basically just black olives!
I know all my spiders are missing a pair of legs...so this isn't technically a spider anymore.
For aesthetic purposes, I also placed some dried squid (a Thai snack) around the eggs.
Main: Bloddy Spaghetti & Meatball eyes
with Bone Sticks
X made the meatballs - your typical ingredients (ground pork, onions, garlic, flour, egg, bread crumbs) shaped in a ball then fried. For the sauce, I sautéd some onions and garlic and used one can of corned beef. We didn't blend tomatoes; we used the ready-made Del Monte Spaghetti sauce (a large Italian style, and a small "sweet" style). After mixing the sauce and the pasta and placing the meatballs on the spaghetti, we turned them into eye balls with a thin slice of cheese and a thin olive ring!
The bone sticks are basically white bread shaped like bones, and toasted! The excess part of the bread was used for the meatballs (instead of buying bread crumbs).
Main 2: Finger in a bun
This was probably the creepiest looking on the table! "Halloween hotdogs" came up when X and I googled for halloween food ideas. It's so easy to make - just get some chicken hotdogs, then slice a little part of the top (to look like a nail-less finger) then a few lines in the middle (to give more details to the finger) and boil! Smear some ketchup inside the bun before placing the hotdogs inside, and also add a little more ketchup in the lines/knuckles. Sick!!
Dessert: Slimy worms
The base of this is gulaman (gelatine). It's a mix of green and black. The gelatine is flavorless, so I just added sugar to make it a bit sweet. Then I made another gulaman mix that's color red (instead of adding sugar, I added strawberry juice powder), then I diced it all up to look messy and poured it on top of the first layer of jelly. I poked a few holes around and inserted gummy worms. In the dark, it looks bloody and muddy...and the texture of the diced jelly on top made it look like the gummy worms were moving around.
Dessert 2: Cupcakes
X was in her comfort zone when she started to bake. The smell coming out of the oven was absolutely heavenly! Here's her recipe:
(2) 1/2 cups sifted flour
(1) 1/2 cup white sugar
2 tbs baking powder
1 stick melted butter
1/2 cup vegetable oil
3/4 cup water or milk
1 tbs vanilla extract
3 eggs
1/2 cup melted chocolate
1/4 cup instant coffee (mixed with water)
Frosting:
2 cups unsalted butter
2 cups granulated sugar
(1) 1/2 tbs vanilla extract
These ingredients made us 30 cupcakes!
For the topping, we had bought some chocolate oreos which we wanted to crush and pour over the icing, to look like soil. But a few hours after we got home, we couldn't find the oreos. Turns out my brother stole them from the shopping bag! Good thing we bought some gummy eyes, so we just used those instead.
Drinks
I wanted to make Chapman (a popular Nigerian drink/my childhood favorite) but I completely forgot to get grenadine syrup (non-alcoholic). So this is just Fanta and Coke mixed together. Then more candies! Gummy worms on the jug and gummy vampire teeth on the glasses!
Our table set up
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| Those decorations on the wall were all hand made. I just searched on youtube "how to make halloween lanterns" and "paper spiders" Learn something new every day :) |