Halloween Ideas

This year we decided to try out some fun Halloween dishes and decorations, including Zombie Fingers, Bleeding Brain Cakes, Candy Corn Sugar Cookies, Skull Mushrooms, Throwing Up Fruit Bowl, and Mice Meatloaf! Keep reading for some instructions on how to make some of these fun and creative appetizers, entrées, and desserts, to spice up your Halloween Party this year!

1. We will start off with a great appetizer: A Throwing Up Fruit Bowl! This great looking appetizer is pretty straight forward. Just cut the watermelon as show in the picture, and set different fruits inside to make it look like the watermelon head is throwing up!

2. For a great side dish, there are the Skull Mushrooms! These are a lot of fun to make and eat, and they don't take much time at all! We used a small pumpkin carving tool in order to carve ours. First, carve out two eye's in the top. Then cut out a triangle shaped nose. Next, simply cut teeth out of the stalk by doing three thin triangles with the tip being closest to the mushroom top. For a more taste, you can bake the skulls in the oven with butter and different seasonings.

3. The entrée is a personal favorite, Mice Meatloaf! Feel free to use your own recipe for Meatloaf as well as for mashed potatoes. To make the mice, mold a normal sized meatloaf meatball for the body and a small meatloaf meatball for the head. Use dried spaghetti for the whiskers, a half piece of cooked spaghetti for the tail, and then be creative for the eyes and nose! We used tiny cut out pieces of pepperoni for the nose and sliced up raisins for the eyes. Once the mice are made and cooked serve two on top of mashed potatoes.

4. Now for desserts, first up is Zombie Fingers! This was a super easy dessert to make, and it tastes absolutely amazing. All you need is a bag of pretzel sticks, two bags of white chocolate chips, sliced almonds, green food coloring, a toothpick, a large mixing bowl, and wax paper! Simply melt the white chocolate in the mixing bowl, add green dye, and coat the pretzels evenly. I find it easiest to scrape along the sides of the frosting with a spoon to make it thin and even. Next, set them on wax paper and immediately place an almond slice on the end for the finger tip. Let them cool for about 5 minutes before using the toothpick to make the knuckle lines. You don't want them solid to do this, but it is best if they aren't too liquidly either.

5. Next is Candy Corn shaped sugar cookies. This is also a very easy dessert, and I will send you off to Land O Lakes website for all of the ingredients and instructions:

Land O Lakes Sparkling Candy Corn Sugar Cookies

6. Finally there is the Bleeding Brain Cake, which is perhaps the simplest one of all to make. Just bake a cake, stack and cut it into the brain shape, and frost with vanilla dyed pink into the brain pattern using a cake piper (DON'T use strawberry frosting (from what brand?), the color is right but it tastes horrible). In our version, we used DeBrands Raspberry sauce which not only looks like blood, but it adds great flavor to the chocolate and vanilla cake. Lastly, slide a knife into the center of the Bleeding Brain Cake for the best effect!

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