This Halloween, scare up some fun… with food. Dust off the cauldron, try some bewitching new recipes and become the ghostess with the mostess.
“It really is just so much fun with the kids,” described Kathy Wolper of Kathy’s Just Desserts in East Norriton. “It just makes me smile.”
To make others smile, the kitchen whiz performs a little hocus pocus and transforms two bundt cakes into a jack-o’-lantern.
“It can double as a centerpiece looking like a jack-o’-lantern. And who doesn’t like cake?” mused Wolper, whose family always gathered after trick-or-treating for a howling good time.
“I would bake that cake, and my mother would make dinner for everyone. It was ‘ghoul’-ash,” she recalled with a laugh.
How about mashed potato “ghosts” atop beef stew?
Halloween ideas float easily to Angie Heron of Souderton, who organizes children’s cooking parties as The Playful Chef. She and her four children, ages 5 to 11, get in the spirit with tricky treats like spider sandwiches, jack-o’-lantern cups and pumpkin dip.
“It’s just really creamy. You can dip anything in it – cookies, veggies. You can make it a sweeter treat or more healthy,” Heron suggested. “I like being able to have variety.”
She also likes to carve out memories.
“It’s for the kids to get involved doing something with their parents, that whole interaction,” Heron said. “Talking and being together while you cook is just amazing!”
“Cooking has become such a family activity,” agreed Angie Lee, resident chef at Sur La Table in King of Prussia, which offers cooking classes for adults and children. “It’s so much fun to watch the kids. They get so into it.”
At the Halloween-themed class, they’ll go batty for spellbinding cookies like witches’ fingers.
“It has a whole almond as the fingernail. Those are going to be really cute,” she said.
Another good one for goblin’ up: boo-tiful ghosts.
“It’s a sugar cookie decorated with royal icing and sprinkles,” Lee explained. “I love watching the kids get creative.”
No bones about it. “The running joke after a class like that is: ‘a clown exploded in the kitchen,'” she added. “It’s a beautiful mess.”
Spider Sandwich1 English muffin
2 tablespoons peanut butter or cream cheese
2 tablespoons jelly, jam or any fruit cut into small pieces
8 pretzel sticks2 raisinsSpread peanut butter (or cream cheese) and jelly (or fruit/jam) on top of the muffin. Once sandwich is closed, add two raisins for eyes. Next, add the pretzels as spider legs, putting four on each side.
Recipe courtesy of The Playful Chef
Jack-O’-Lantern CupCut out top of an orange and scoop out the insides. Carve a jack-o’-lantern face. Children can use a strong plastic knife to carve. Kids can draw on the face and adults can carve, or just use the drawn-on face as the decoration. Fill with ice cream and put a cinnamon stick in as a straw.
Recipe courtesy of The Playful Chef
Pumpkin Dip1 (8-ounce) package of cream cheese
2 cups confectioners’ sugar1 (15-ounce) can solid-pack pumpkin
1 teaspoon cinnamon1 teaspoon nutmeg
Cream the cream cheese and sugar together. Mix in the pumpkin and sprinkle cinnamon and nutmeg on top for flavor and color. Serve with apples, cookies, crackers, fruit, or wafers. Serve it in the jack-o’-lantern cup or in a small pumpkin with insides removed.
Recipe courtesy of The Playful Chef
Jack-O’-Lantern CakeBake two separate bundt cakes (your favorite recipes). When cool, make buttercream frosting. Tint most of it orange, but save some to tint green.
Put one cake on top of the other with flat sides together (you will want to frost between the two layers to be sure they stick together). Frost entire two cakes in orange, so it looks like a pumpkin.
Take reserved green frosting and frost a flat-bottomed ice cream cone. Put it in the hole in the center of the bundt cakes, and it’s the pumpkin stem. Use melted chocolate to pipe a jack-o-lantern face on the side of the double cake/pumpkin.
Recipe courtesy of Kathy’s Just Desserts
Witches’ FingersYield: 2 dozen (4-inch) fingers
11/4 cups all-purpose flour1 teaspoon ground cinnamon
1/2 teaspoon kosher salt1/2 cup unsalted butter, room temperature
11/2 ounces cream cheese, room temperature
1/3 cup granulated sugar2 tablespoons light brown sugar
1 large egg yolk1 teaspoon vanilla bean paste
24 sliced almonds (1 per cookie for nails)
Preheat an oven to 350 degrees and position an oven rack in the center. Line two baking sheets with parchment paper. In a bowl, combine the flour, cinnamon and salt. Set aside.
In the bowl of a stand mixer, fitted with a paddle attachment, add the butter and cream cheese, and beat on medium speed until smooth. Gradually add the sugars and mix until light and fluffy. Add the egg yolk and vanilla, and mix, using a silicone spatula to scrape down the sides, until well combined. Reduce the speed of the mixer to low and gradually add the flour mixture, mixing until just combined.
Fill either a cookie press or a pastry bag, fitted with a 1/4-inch pastry tip, with dough and press the dough into 3 1/2-inch-long cylinders. Apply a little more pressure halfway through the piping process to form ‘knuckles.’ Using a paring knife, gently score the top of the dough to form wrinkles. Press an almond into one end of each cookie to make the fingernail.
Transfer the cookie sheet to the oven and bake, checking almonds halfway through to ensure they are still in place, until golden-brown, about 10 to 12 minutes. Allow the fingers to cool to the touch on baking sheet before transferring to a wire cooling rack to completely cool.
Recipe courtesy of Sur La Table
Boo-tiful GhostsWhen baking cookies, a great tip is to use flour on your utensils, such as cookie cutters and spatulas, to keep the dough from sticking. Additionally, rolling the dough between two sheets of floured parchment paper will prevent the dough from sticking to the rolling pin.
Yield: Makes 4 dozen cookies23/4 cups all-purpose flour, plus more for rolling
1 teaspoon baking soda1/2 teaspoon baking powder
1/4 teaspoon salt1 cup unsalted butter, room temperature
11/2 cups granulated sugar1 large egg
1 teaspoon vanilla bean paste1 recipe Royal Icing, for decorating
Ghost cookie cutterPreheat an oven to 350 degrees and position rack in the center. Line two baking sheets with parchment paper. In a small bowl, combine the flour, baking soda, baking powder and salt. Set aside.
In the bowl of a stand mixer, fitted with a paddle attachment, cream the butter and the sugar on high speed, until light and fluffy, about 5 minutes. Add the egg and vanilla, and mix until well combined. Reduce the mixer speed to low. Gradually add the dry ingredients and beat until well combined.
Divide the dough mixture in half and flatten into disks. Wrap each disc in plastic; freeze until firm, about 20 minutes. If sealed tightly, the dough will last in the freezer for up to 3 months.
Remove one disk from the freezer and allow to stand at room temperature for 5 minutes until workable. Roll the dough to 1/8-inch thick between two sheets of floured parchment, dusting the dough with flour as needed. Using a ghost-shaped cookie cutter, cut the dough and transfer, using a spatula, to prepared baking sheets. (If the dough becomes too soft to work with, chill until firm, about 10 minutes.) Reroll the scraps of pastry, cutting the shapes. Repeat with the remaining dough.
Transfer the baking sheets to the oven and bake, rotating halfway through, until the edges are golden in color, about 8 to 10 minutes. Transfer to wire racks and allow to cool slightly.
To ice cookies: Use an offset spatula or the back of a spoon to spread the icing mixture. Allow the icing to harden and use assorted sprinkles or sugars to decorate into a boo-tiful ghost.
Recipe courtesy of Sur La Table
Royal Icing This light and fluffy icing is traditionally used for glazing cookies, as glue for gingerbread houses and piping decorations. Should you prefer a thinner consistency glaze, add a little more water to the mixture to thin-out. To color the frosting, it is best to use a gel paste or powdered colors. Liquid food coloring can dilute the frosting making the end result grainy.
Yield: 3 cups1/4 cup meringue powder
1/4 teaspoon salt31/2 cups confectioners’ sugar, sifted
3/4 cup cold waterFood colorings of your choice (optional)
In the bowl of a stand-mixer, fitted with a paddle attachment, combine the meringue powder, salt and confectioners’ sugar. With the mixer on low, slowly add the water and mix until the sugar is dissolved, about 1 minute. Increase the mixer speed to medium for one minute and then to high, and mix until the icing is pale and fluffy, about 4 minutes total.
Transfer the frosting to a clean container and cover with a damp towel. If using food colors, divide frosting into smaller containers and mix until well combined. To use for piping, put a tip onto the bottom of a disposable pastry bag. Using a coupler will allow you to change tips easily.
Recipe courtesy of Sur La Table
No tricks, just treats* About 75 percent of households plan to give candy to trick-or-treaters.
* Americans’ favorite Halloween candy: chocolate! Candy corn ranked a distant second.
* Most parents, 78 percent, confess to taking candy from their child’s Halloween haul.
Source: National Confectioners Association
