The blood-smudge on the edge of the plate is my favorite part.
My son said he wanted a "spooky cake" for his sixth birthday. Done - except I didn't want to just do a repeat of last year's ghost cake. I pulled up a picture of a plain fondant cake in my head - just a smooth, white circle - and tried to imagine what I could turn it into...and then it occurred to me:
Eyeball Cake.
Forgive me, please...because you're about to be hit with an avalanche of Halloween-related content. Honestly, though, I feel 100% entitled to milk my son's Halloween-themed birthday party for every single last itty-bitty drop of content, because I DESTROYED it.
Like, KILLED IT DEAD.
(You know: ifIdosaysomyself.)
Now THIS is the kind of dessert I could have gotten on board with as a kid: Oreos that have been decimated to the point where total potential cookie intake is maximized like whoa.
Sidenote: somehow fifteen whole cookies translate into one teaspoon of ground-up cookie, and while I'm not exaaaaactly sure how to explain the physics behind this, I do know that my daughter ate 90 Trader Joe's Halloween-themed Jo-Jos in the course of an hour via six cups of worms 'n' dirt. And honestly, to me that seems...
Well...
Like a job extremely well done.
I cannot take credit for inventing this one - I found it on Pinterest - but I wish I could, because it's genius, costs next-to-nothing, and takes about five seconds (not counting the twenty minutes I spent hunting for a box of Band-Aids to add the all-important finishing touch).
Obviously you need to make a puking pumpkin this Halloween. My personal preference is to do the bare minimum with the pumpkin (does it have a mouth? does it have eyes? you're done.) and just throw on a whole bunch of Costco-brand guacamole, because come on: it's a vomiting pumpkin - how much more do you need?
But if you want to get all fancy and particular about it, here are a whole bunch more ideas for how to completely gross out your guests.
Ew. I know. But Bloody Brains score extremely high on the effort/impact scale: they take just a few minutes to make, and everybody will have something to say about them. (That something will probably be "ew.")
Note: Popcorn balls are always best when they're super-fresh, but you can make these up to a day in advance provided you wrap them individually in plastic wrap and put them in an airtight container; the jelly will retain its shine really well.
The hardest part of making these was keeping my children from eating all of the lollipops quicker than I could wrap them up. The second-hardest part of making these was the fact that my three-year-old REALLY wanted to help, and obviously you need to let children participate with Halloween decoration-making, but girlfriend seriously needs to work on her ghost face-drawing skills, just saying.
These ghosts make cute party favors for kids, but you can use them to decorate in lots of fun ways: use string to hang them from light fixtures and such; fill a bowl with them for a centerpiece; line a mirror or mantle with them. (One caveat: if you're hanging them with string, make sure the string is clear, or the effect can be a little too macabre for a kids' party.)
OK, caveat: I am aware that the macaroni and cheese shown above does not look particularly delicious. It was actually delicious, because all Mac 'n' cheese is delicious and that is just a fact, but it probably would have been more delicious had we made it before people arrived, as opposed to making it in advance and reheating it.
Macaroni and cheese just doesn't look as great post-reheating.
But still.
Over the years my Halloween fails have been epic, and last weekend was no different.
OK, so Saturday night may not have been my finest parenting moment. My friend Erin - whose son and daughter are the same ages as my own, and who are very close with our kids - told me she'd heard about a haunted house that a family had set up in their home a couple of blocks away, and asked if we wanted to come check it out with them. It was starting up after Goldie's bedtime, but I asked Indy if he wanted to go and obviously he was all "SPOOKY STUFF?!?! YEAH!" So once night fell, we paused Ghostbusters (which, as a sidenote, gave me a super-fun opportunity to explain to my son exactly what people are doing when they show their middle finger; thank you Ghostbusters), put on Jedi robes, and headed out.
And then what happened was that I maybe possibly traumatized my child for all eternity.
"Would you like a bloody slug?"
Come on, how cute are these guys?! I'm aware that the name "Bloody Slug" is mildly unappetizing, but let me assure you: these are suuuuuper delicious and will be consumed within seconds by the children in attendance - so if you want one, trust me and move quickly. (And yeah, they're essentially sugar bombs, but whatever, Halloween is like a Defcon 1 high-fructose disaster anyway. Might as well not fight it.)
So what these are, essentially, are cake pops made with extra frosting so that they sort of collapse on themselves and don't hold on to the exterior coating as well (thereby letting the color of the cake show through). And when the color that's showing through is red and the overall effect is that of a melty, ghost-ish, vaguely slug-like creature, there you go:
