Halloween 2010

Brains, witch broom cookies, chocolate spiders, and Halloween Pie!


This is my Halloween Decorations Table -- Jack, Creepy Tree, Eyeball, Coffin, and Fuzzy Bat get to enjoy the living room once a year.




All of these pictures are out of focus because I accidentally had the camera set on macro the entire weekend. Why I didn't think to check the setting after having significant trouble getting it to auto-focus, I don't know.



While shopping for something entirely different, I bought a brain mould. The first brain I made was marshmallow -- definitely the sturdier of the two. The second, gelatin like the mould's box suggested. In a regular climate, the gelatin brain would have survived longer. Both brains looked gross and awesome!



Halloween Pie was an orange-dyed milktart with a variety of candy and chocolate shapes. I bought a LOT of chocolate and candy moulds for Halloween, and only got to use a few. I did discover semi-sweet chocolate does not set the same way as candy melts or white chocolate, and cracked a mould getting one dark skull out.



Chocolate spiders started vanishing quickly:



I also tried to make bones out of meringue. As with all of my previous meringue experiments, they pretty much failed. The brain-bite cupcakes were a decent success, I think. I made half of them dirty pink and the other half greenish for zombie brains.



The bones didn't look too bad stacked up in a pile, but they were very difficult to pull off the parchment paper and most were gooey, not stiff. On the bottom right, the corner of the pretzels that became witch broom cookies. On the top left, brain mould box.



I also made pumpkin chili, which was delicious!



Happy Hauntings!
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Marshmallows

Marshmallows!



After a discussion with my sister-in-law about how commercial marshmallows have deteriorated into disgusting, un-roastable little snowman turds, I looked up a recipe for marshmallows on www.cookingforengineers.com. This is the first batch -- I stirred in some mini chocolate chips before setting them, then dipped them in chocolate once I cut them into squares and tapped the edges in corn starch to prevent sticking. The recipe called for using powdered sugar on the edges, but they were plenty sweet without it.


In the next batch, I stirred chopped maraschino cherries. Can't locate a picture, but I plan to make another batch of those for Lupercalia 2010.

Evil Bitch-Monster of Death's note: I find the marshmallows too sweet with 2/3 c. corn syrup. In the recipes in which I replaced most of it it with something else (chocolate, maraschino cherry liquid), the sweetness came out great. For plain batches, I suggest using only 1/3 - 1/2 c. corn syrup.
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