For starters, we had the Crypt Keeper, our signature drink of the evening. While I don't have a picture of this, I did serve it in a big cauldron! It consists of apple cider, whiskey, and ginger ale, and it was delicious! I googled drinks using apple cider since this is definitely the season for it, and there's just something about apple cider that brings me into fall. This recipe is definitely a keeper...a crypt keeper!!
Ha!
On to the savory dishes on the table at this apocalypse, shall we? I'll start with the Cured Epidermis. Sounds gross, right? Well, it's simply proscuitto slices, heated in the oven for about 10 minutes, until crispy and sizzling. I've linked the recipe here, but I would definitely keep an eye on this while it cooks, because I found the timing to be a bit off. Salty, crunchy and delicious...with an equally disturbing title!
On the same platter as the Cured Epidermis, I placed my Mummy's Bandages. This is simply a baked brie, that I made to look like a mummy. After wrapping the brie in a layer of rolled-out puff pastry, I cut the leftovers into strips and then wrapped it up. I used currents for the eyes, and this was probably my favorite item on the table. It just came out so great!!!
The Sinister Salsa is merely a guacamole, with the addition of some black beans, making it look mucky and swampy. It still looked appetizing, and tasted just as great, but there's something about black lumps in something brightly colored to make it look a bit on the eerie side!
The Bat Wings are, obviously, chicken wings, but I made three different kinds! The first kind had a soy sauce marinade, and the recipe called for black paste food coloring, which I couldn't find. As a result, the wings were brown, but not dark enough to really resemble bat wings, but still...I think my guests got the gist. The other two flavors came from the same recipe, that included a sauce for spicy wings, and a sauce for honey mustard wings. (for this second recipe, again, watch the timing...40 minutes is WAY too long to let wings cook under a broiler...I'd say they were ready in less than 15) I put them all in a bowl together, and I apologize for the quality of the photo...that one didn't work out so well!
Devils on Horseback, you say? What could those possibly be!? If you guessed, bacon-wrapped dates and prunes, you'd be correct! These took a bit of time to prep but I used the time that my oven was busy baking all sorts of desserts to prep the savory items for cooking, right before the party started. There are many different recipes out there for this savory appetizer. To stuff or not to stuff, seems to be the question, but I opted for just the dried fruit, and the bacon. Yum!
Now, we also have guest contributions to the table, and I took some pictures of my friend Sherlly's Eyeballs with Pasta. The "eyeballs" are made out of mozzarella balls, with olives! How creepy is that!?!?! My friend, Heidi, also brought some delicious calzones!
And now, for all you sweet teeth out there, we have plenty of desserts decorating our Halloween table! First and foremost, my favorite - Pumpkin Pasties. Pasties are a British delicacy, and can have savory or sweet fillings. For this particular pastie, it's pie dough, wrapped around a pumpkin filling, to make little pies. Pumpkin pasties are also served on the night that Harry Potter and all his friends arrived at Hogwarts to begin each school year!
Witches' Fingers are cookies, that I used a special pan to shape. You can use pretty much any cookie recipe, as long as you have the pan, and I tinted the dough with green food coloring before the mixing was completed. Once cooked, I used red gel icing to decorate the fingernail of each cookie, tying it all together. Before I put the icing on, they didn't look as much like fingers as they do in the final product!
The cupcakes I made, and coined poisoned, are obviously not poisoned, but they do tend to insinuate the macabre. I used a yellow cake recipe, and then swirled in some raspberry jam for a yummy base, and used a vanilla icing before adding the decorations. They speak for themselves! :)
As for the guest contributions in the dessert category, Heidi made this beautiful Spider Web Cake, with butter cream frosting and a raspberry layer within the cake! She also made some amazing zombie, haunted house and Dracula cookies that could rival any bakery!
As you can see, I love throwing a good themed party! Use your creativity to make ties between your theme, and the names of your menu items! It's fun for you, and it's fun for the guests, and it definitely makes for a more creative evening. If you want to throw a creatively themed party of any kind, but need a little help getting started, I'd love to help! Shoot me an email, and we can come up with an arrangement for me to help you plan your next shindig! Menu planning, time management, and shopping list generation are only a few of the things that can make or break a good event, and I'd love to lend a hand!
Happy Halloween everyone!!!
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