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Fall/Halloween party ideas


chefjack

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Hey all as Halloween aproaches I have been requested by my employer to create a kids & adult halloween party with cakes, cupcakes, cookies, and finger foods. I have a few ideas but was wondering if anyone else is doing this and has any bright ideas or web sites with bright ideas and recipes.

Just wunderin, you bunch of ghouls, goblins, ghosts and pastry cooks... :shock:

Life is so brief that we should not glance either too far backwards or forwards…therefore study how to fix our happiness in our glass and in our plate.

A.L.B. Grimod de la Reyniere

'Almanach des gourmands'

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Hey all as Halloween aproaches I have been requested by my employer to create a kids & adult halloween party with cakes, cupcakes, cookies, and finger foods. I have a few ideas but was wondering if anyone else is doing this and has any bright ideas or web sites with bright ideas and recipes.

Just wunderin, you bunch of ghouls, goblins, ghosts and pastry cooks... :shock:

If you bake two sturdy bundt cakes - the classic shape, you can put one upsidedown and the other on top of it to form a pumpkin, then ice it orange and make a stem and leaves and whatnot.

I make shortbread or sugar cookies shaped like a finger with a whole almond for a fingernail...drizzle a little 'blood' in the appropriate spots and it's fairly gross.

Little bocconcini balls with olive slices make dandy 'eyeballs'....I use beet juice for the veins.

Check out Martha Stewart...she has some very good ideas in her hallowe'en magazine.

Don't try to win over the haters. You're not the jackass whisperer."

Scott Stratten

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the place where i work has made witches fingers with dyed almonds as the fingernails, as mentioned above. they're pretty great!

we also did little short bread brooms with pretzel sticks for the handle.

peanut butter balls dipped in white chocolate, decorated to be eyeballs.

butternut soup served in miniature scooped out pumpkins.

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Brains....brains... Get your hands on one of the brain shaped molds and fill with panna cotta of your choosing. Surround with a deep red glaze of some sort - cranberry, raspberry, etc. and drizzle some on top. Best served on a meat carving board for full effect.

I make these up every year. Always fun to see who is brave enough to give it a try. :rolleyes:

Kathy

Cooking is like love. It should be entered into with abandon or not at all. - Harriet Van Horne

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I have a couple of ideas for cakes for Halloween that I thought would be fun: 1) a Barbie-style (aka wondermold) cake with a brunette Barbie as the bride of Frankenstein and I just picked up some sort of Ken as a groom for the big guy - perhaps lying on a sofa (fondant-covered cake?) watching football. 2) the ever-popular poker table with piped or molded figures of dracula, frankenstein, the mummy, the werewolf, igor, headless horseman, etc. Would love to see pictures if anyone does these...my dh wants to do a haunted house with the kids. Good luck.

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Actually I've been working on the same project..........all night until I just logged on. I've been doing halloween buffets for a couple years now at several country clubs.

I'm too tired at the moment to mention what I've done/ideas. I think I posted photos from a couple halloween parties I've done in my blog. Here's a link to it. Hope that helps alittle..........

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I got a 50 pound bucket of raspberry marmalade from Albert Uster (don't ask). In my desperation to use it all, I decided to try choux puff eyeballs for Halloween. Basic choux puffs filled with -- you guessed it -- raspberry marmalade and decorated like eyeballs. I'm thinking about dipping the tops in white chocolate and piping the rest.

That's one way to put a dent in 50 lbs. of raspberry marmalade.

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The foodnetwork challenge for this week is the spooky cake and candy competition. Should be some cute ideas there.

http://www.foodnetwork.com/food/show_sp/ep...4_40678,00.html

Pamela Wilkinson

www.portlandfood.org

Life is a rush into the unknown. You can duck down and hope nothing hits you, or you can stand tall, show it your teeth and say "Dish it up, Baby, and don't skimp on the jalapeños."

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I got a 50 pound bucket of raspberry marmalade from Albert Uster (don't ask). In my desperation to use it all, I decided to try choux puff eyeballs for Halloween. Basic choux puffs filled with -- you guessed it -- raspberry marmalade and decorated like eyeballs. I'm thinking about dipping the tops in white chocolate and piping the rest.

That's one way to put a dent in 50 lbs. of raspberry marmalade.

This is a really cool idea, takomabaker. I bet they look great, and the raspberry jam filling squooshing out the sides when you bite it must be the coup de grace!

These skull cookies might also work well. They sound a little finicky to make but they look really good. Check out the photo and recipe on Heidi Swanson's "101 Cookbooks" blog here.

"Under the dusty almond trees, ... stalls were set up which sold banana liquor, rolls, blood puddings, chopped fried meat, meat pies, sausage, yucca breads, crullers, buns, corn breads, puff pastes, longanizas, tripes, coconut nougats, rum toddies, along with all sorts of trifles, gewgaws, trinkets, and knickknacks, and cockfights and lottery tickets."

-- Gabriel Garcia Marquez, 1962 "Big Mama's Funeral"

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The eyeballs are peanut butter balls dipped in white chocolate. Then an M&M and tinted piping gel finish it off.

The fingers are just a stiff butter cookie, rolled into logs. Then they're pinched at the tip and the middle joint and scored for the knuckle lines. The fingernail is just a sliced almond. Those are dipped into the same piping gel as the eyes.

The fingers are really easy and browned just right look really gross in person. Kids love that. The eyeballs take more time, but they're irresistable. I've also done the peanut butter balls as snowmen for Christmas, using chocolate plastic for the hats and nose and piped on charcoal eyes and smiles. After Wendy's idea of orange choux filled with pumpkin mousse, that gave me the idea of peanut butter ball pumpkins...but not enough time for this year's parties.

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There is a very cute little feature on creating Halloween goodies, and it includes directions on how to make those finger cookies.

Bleeding heart cupcakes and brain cupcakes are other good ideas.

Epicurious Halloween

another idea is find Halloween candies like spider-shaped gummies and suspend them in green jello

or chocolates shaped like witches hats

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I've been wanting to make up the finger cookies for years now and had to make them tonight after seeing that wonderful picture. After the first batch I started playing around and made half fingers, big toes, little toes, and finally a hand to top everything off. Should win the "scariest dessert" competition at my husband's work, I think :wink:.

Phalanges, ready to bake:

fingers2.jpg

Finished digits:

fingers4.jpg

The hand that fell apart while baking (note to self, next time lay hand flat to bake and don't get creative and try to curve it) I reassembled it, flat:

finger6.jpg

Edited by tejon (log)

Kathy

Cooking is like love. It should be entered into with abandon or not at all. - Harriet Van Horne

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Hello everyone. this is my first post here, but I have been lurking for quite some time now. The fingers are amazing lookin, as is all the food here. It just so happens, that last night I made a batch of ghost marshmellows for my mother's first grade class she teaches. I piped chocolate around the edges to make them stand out more and gave them eyes and a mouth. The ghosts came out ok for rushing, as I had to study for a midterm :wacko:

I didn't get to post a finished picture, but there are two done in the picture lol. Enjoy. Hope the picture shows up! If not let me know. Thanks.

gallery_37140_1994_402294.jpg

Edited by Lumas (log)
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