October 28, 2012
by Sarah Gerdes
Best halloween treats –
A week ago I threw my first, and probably last, adult halloween party, at least in this home. After 14 years of refusing to my request, Rog, out of the blue, said, “why not?” (of course, I think this was right after he’d returned home from a week of fishing for Salmon in Oregon and two days before leaving for Pinehurst, but whatever. I’ll take it).
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| “Witchy fingers” — the biggest hit of the night |
The first thing I do is call cousin Nance, she of the ideas for the 9-foot witch that I ended up changing to a jilted bride, for lack of either witch costumes at Goodwill and the lack of ability to sew the darn thing.
“Make the eyeball trouffles” Nance recommends with all the must of a mom who had been on the road all night, ferrying her fourteen year-old daughter from Vegas to San Diego for yet another soccer championship game. “Or the witches fingers. Two kinds. Or the meringue bones. Or mummy pigs in a blanket (the party fav).”
Before I can get in a word, she promises to send me a dozen recipes that have pictures. I fret about ingredients, but she assures me I don’t have to worry.
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| My personal favorite-the chocolate rats (rolled in white confectioners sugar or crushed choc graham crackers for dark- although next time I might use sweetened dark chocolate) |
“This is American baking at its best,” she says me in a laughing-while-soothing voice. “It’s all butter, flour and some salt and vanilla extract in different measurements.” When I receive the recipes, she’s right. Save for a few recipes, the only addition is eggs and almond extract (for the almond variation of the witchy fingers) or the sweet witchy fingers, and chocolate (white and semi-sweet) for the RIP cookies an coffin brownies.
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| Peanut truffle eyeballs covered in white chocolate |
For simplicity, I think I’m going to include a few recipes in this blog, and then break them out into separate blogs. Just for grins, I’m going to include the professional photo (from Nancy’s original emails) and then my ‘reality’ photo. It’s nice to know that they all taste the same, no matter the look (in theory, that is).
The first thing I do is crank up some Lana Del Rey Blue Jeans remix and get going.
And because I had nothing better to do, I used the ‘spooky template’ from Microsoft Powerpoint, changed the words and printed out a “Slimy Sarah’s Best Rancid Recipes. I overlayed this on top of my oldest and most word Barefoot Contessa Cookbook. I’m sure she didn’t mind.