Inferior Inspiration #15: Halloween food edition!

Although my (fairly minimal) Halloween decorations are up again this year, they haven't changed one bit from last year's Halloween decor post.  Writing a feature for WOW247 about the 5 best Halloween inspired sweet treats on offer in Edinburgh last week inspired me to trawl Pinterest and compile a list of the most creative and cutesy Halloween party food I could find for this year's themed blog post.

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It's pretty much unheard of for me to choose the healthy option when it comes to snacking, but I have to admit that these are some awesome looking fruits and vegetables.  At least the fruit kebabs have marshmallows on them (which, as far as I'm aware, haven't yet been classed as a fruit) along with the melon pumpkins and kiwi Frankensteins.  I also think the idea of hollowing out a pumpkin and using it to serve dip with vegetable crudités was genius and definitely worth a mention.  And I'm not sure who could really find the time to dye rice orange using carrot juice to make the jack o' lantern rice balls, but don't they look adorable?

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I think these poison toffee apples look so cool, even if their blackest black colour makes me a little bit nervous.  (If you're wondering, the secret is black food colouring, presumably in industrial quantities!)  The eerie eyeball cocktails are actually just lemonade with green sweets to give the colour and a floating eyeball cake topper, but I bet they would benefit from adding some alcohol for a 'grown up' party.  Marshmallow pops coated with festive coloured sprinkles look great and also seem pretty easy to make!

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How blooming cute are these chocolate owl cupcakes, decorated with a separated Oreo biscuit and M&Ms?  Again, they look fantastic but probably wouldn't take too long to put together, especially if you cheated and used store bought cupcakes - I promise I won't tell if you don't.  Everyone loves a donut, so who wouldn't want to include some monster donuts on their Halloween party buffet table?  Just be sure to remind everyone that the plastic vampire teeth are not edible...  Last, but certainly not least, the ingredients for spooky boo brownie bites - chocolate brownie and marshmallows - are an unbeatable combination, and these wee ghostly faces prompted screams (of delight) from me on first sight.

Sadly I won't have time to try my hand at making any of these terrifying treats for myself in the next few days, although Craig and I will be having friends round for a traditional scarefest movie marathon over the weekend.  Are you baking anything for a Halloween party this weekend?

Christmas cookies:

Aside from painted rocks passed off as paperweights, I've never given a homemade present before.  It's not that I don't want to, it's just that a combination of being unskilled and unorganised means that I've never managed to make anything worth passing on.  If you suffer from the same problem, I've come up with a solution for us non-arty types: Christmas cookies.  As long as you can follow a recipe, you can bake some tasty biscuits and turn them into a heartfelt (and also extremely affordable) Christmas gift.

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For this experiment, I decided on two different recipes: Peanut Butter Surprise and Ultimate Ginger Cookies.  I might be biased, but both of them taste delicious!  It was a close call, but I think I prefer the ginger ones myself.  The Peanut Butter Surprise cookies are a favourite of YouTuber, Jennifer Ross (or Organized Jen online), and I've been looking for an excuse to try my hand at these for a while now.  I followed her straightforward recipe, which she has adapted from a Martha Stewart one, and helpfully pinned on her Pinterest page.  You can read it here, and you can also see Jen demonstrating the recipe on her YouTube channel here.

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The Ultimate Ginger Cookies came from a Google search, which isn't always the smartest way to choose a recipe you've never attempted before.  However, I was won over by a five star rating and the rave reviews from others who had already tried the cookies out.  The recipe (written by the Barefoot Contessa, Ina Garten) comes from the Food Network website, and you can view it here.

Possible pitfalls:

1. As both of these recipes are American, there's quite a lot of calculation involved in getting the quantities of ingredients right, if you are a Brit like me.

2. Some substitutes will be required if baking these cookies in the UK.  For example, I don't think 'creamy peanut butter' exists here, I just bought 'smooth' instead.  Use treacle in place of unsulfured molasses (sounds terrifying, doesn't it?), and plain flour for 'all-purpose' in both recipes.

3. My local Asda stocks bags of mini Reese's Peanut Butter Cups, required for the Peanut Butter Surprise recipe.  As you can see from my photo, the white chocolate cups burned a little in the oven.  If you want picture perfect cookies, I would recommend just using the milk chocolate ones.

4. In my non-expert opinion, the Ultimate Ginger Cookies don't need quite as much of the ground cloves or any crystallised ginger at all to taste amazing.  Quite a few of the recipe reviewers agreed.

5. The dough for the Peanut Butter cookies might be super sticky, but don't worry, it won't affect how they turn out.

6. I don't know if it's completely necessary for the cookies to be rolled in granulated sugar before baking - there's already a ton of sugar in the dough by the time you get to that stage!

7. Finally, if you'll excuse my poor English here, the Peanut Butter Surprise biscuits are extremely peanut buttery, and the ginger ones very gingery.  Know your demographic when you are giving these cookies, as both peanut butter and ginger flavours have a Marmite 'love it or hate it' effect on most people.

Once you've baked and cooled your cookies, you can simply pop some into a jar, tie some festive ribbon around it and hand it over to your loved one.  I used a plain KORKEN air tight jar from IKEA, which can be decorated as little or as much as you like.

If you'd prefer to give your cookies in bags, there are plenty of festive food bag options.  IKEA have done the perfect cute paper gift bags for the last couple of years.  I still have some left over from last Christmas, but this year's version are called SNÖMYS and are a similar design.

Don't get me wrong, baking a measly handful of cookies was much more of task than I thought, but it was still a satisfying task.  After spending the weekend elbowing my way through hoardes of people to do my Christmas shopping, slaving over a hot oven was actually extremely enjoyable!  You should give it a try.