Row 1: Mozzarella Eyeballs. Instead of last year‘s idea of just using sliced olives with pimentos, I used the technique by the Evil Mad Scientists to create more rounded eyes. The mozzarella balls were marinated ones from Trader Joes.
Row 2: Flayed Skin Cheeseball makes a reappearance. An art store face mold, covered in shreds of proscuito. Cheese ball mixture was 4 or so cups of shredded cheese, 16 oz cream cheese, cajun spices, and some extra finely chopped proscuitto.

Row 3:
1) Final Cheeseball
2) Ingredients for Salmon Brain. 8 oz cream cheese, 1 small piece of fresh salmon, broiled or baked, skinned. 2 heaping tablespoons of sour cream. spices.
3) Hand Shaped Brain, ready for chilling. To form brain, mix all of the ingredients well. Form two balls, one for each half of brain, and press together. Use wet hands to smooth the surface. Use a chopstick to etch out the lines of the brain using a picture for reference. Use wet hands to smooth.

Row 4:
1) Final Brain
2) Completed Creep Fingers and Peanut Butter Truffle Eyeballs.
3) Sushi Samples for this year (directions here). Dried fruits top row: Peach Nigiri, Turkish Apricot Nigiri (split in half so that inside fruit shows), Papaya Nigiri, Papaya/Apricot Maki. Bottom Row: Papaya/Apricot Maki, Sugared Mango Nigiri, Peach (skin side up, split down middle, seam covered by ‘nori’), low sugar Mango Nigiri

Row 5:
1) Sushi Spread
2 & 3) Creepy Bubble Cocktails (instructions here) – Kalhua Grasshopper Shooters*, Orange Fish Eye Shooters**, Extra Pearls for adding to drinks. (Green=Creme de Menthe, Blue=Blue Raspberry drink mixer, Red=Grenadine with added red food coloring).

*Kalhua, Cream, poured over Creme de Menthe balls
** Orange liquer over Red (or Blue) balls

Halloween Food Posts
Halloween Costumes

Edit: Thanks to Craftzine for linking!

See All Halloween Posts

Linky Goodness:
SwellDesigner has some really cool vintage inspired Halloween Ornaments, with tutorial. Neato! And lots of other cool halloween links over there too — check out her Terrorific Tuesday…

Superpunch has a great roundup of Halloween Related Food (includes some you’ve seen here, actually, but even more. Including these adorable monster cupcakes by My Little Mochi

Check out these skull knitted tea-cosies on Whip Up.

Stollaween has some very cool looking papier mache pumpkins, incredible looking, and they have instructions to make your own.. (via craft)

Parenthacks has their Best of Halloween hacks. good stuff.

Oh, and One Pretty Thing has 2 new Halloween Roundups!

And the Evil Mad Scientists have a roundup of projects from halloweens past. check out the bat costume from an umbrella and the many cool geeky pumpkins.

A Dabbled Halloween, Thus Far

The Halloween Contest:

Go check out the items entered thus far in the comments. Great Stuff! Think you can do better? Get to work, just 2 more weeks! Have you been featured, or are you entering the contest? Or do you just want to get the word out? Get your Halloween button here!

Oh, and check out our cool sponsors and the prizes they are offering…

Dabbled Tutorial: Making a Monster Wreath

All Halloween Food, including:
Halloween Eyeballs
Halloween Flayed Skin Cheeseball
and more!

Check out the very creative Halloween Features.

I might have missed something, including inspirational links like these above, so for All Halloween Posts: Click Here

This is really simple to make, and has tons of creative opportunities.

You’ll need:
“Rice” The base is your basic rice krispy treat recipe.
“Fish” – various dried fruits (mango, papaya, & candied ginger all work well, but just go wild in the dried fruit bins)
“Nori”- green or purple fruit leather (fruit rollups–or the natural stuff looks even better). If you can find nicely colored strips (like Yogos Rollers or Fruit by the Foot) that makes it even easier. For ours, we cut green fruit rollups into strips for the nigiri and used green Yogos for some of the maki. The Yogos doesn’t look as nice, but it worked in a pinch.
– Condiments: Wasabi Peas, Sliced Candied Ginger

1. Make the rice krispie treat mixture. You’ll need to work quickly, so make it right before you start.

2. Form the rice bases.
Nigiri:
While the rice krispie treats are still warm and workable, form little rectangular pillows with your hands, about 2-3 in long. We tried making a pan the right thickness and cutting out little bars, but I think this worked a little better (more realistic) — but you can do that and then just round them out with your hands.

Maki: Spread a 3/4 in thick slab (or whatever you want the height of your maki to be, should match the width of your nori strips), and use a small round cookie cutter (I think we used a tomato paste can) to cut circles for your faux maki.

3. Decorate
Nigiri:
Mango or Ginger can be used as is, just place on top and wrap with a strip of ‘Nori’.
Papaya looks great if you slice it, exposing it’s lovely orange-red center.
Maki:
Wrap the sides of the circle with a “nori” strip.
Press small chunks of various colors of fruit or candy into the center of the circle, to give the illusion of a roll.
Halloween option: If you have extra fruit leather in various colors, you can make these into eyes by cutting out a small circle (pupil) and a larger circle (iris), and placing them in the center, instead of the true sushi look.

4. Serve with wasabi peas and sliced candied ginger.

If you have any leftover rice krispie mixture, you can make these fun monster balls, using gummy body parts!

Some of my inspirations:
Evil Mad Scientist’s Dessert Sushi
not martha’s Snack Cake Sushi
Brownie Points super gorgeous Sweet Sushi

and a really cool sushi cake I ran across today from Bitter Betty – love it!

Related Posts:
Halloween Eyeballs
Halloween Flayed Skin Cheeseball
Silly sushi inspirations

As part of the Halloween Food series, we have delicious eyeballs for you here, the sweet and the savory, so read on…

Mozzerella Eyeballs

Note: this recipe has been updated and is EVEN BETTER NOW!

Always looking for yummy Halloween edibles, I created these last year as a easy to prepare and yummy party food. They are simply fresh mozzarella balls, that I bought pre-marinated. Pupil/iris is whole pimento stuffed green olives, sliced and stuck on with a toothpick (Ow! My Eye!).

The Evil Mad Scientists have a more refined version, that I love, and I may modify mine to use some of their tips. All the steps to make these are here. I love how they use two different olives to make the more rounded iris/pupil.

Now on to sweet:
Brown Eye’d Truffles:

These are extremely popular and yummy, we’ve done them the past few years. The inside is a peanut butter truffle, dipped not quite to the top in white chocolate (or white candy bark). The pupil is an upside down mini chocolate chip. You can also add red veins with decorator gel, but I like the simplicity of it without. For a creepier touch, add green paste food coloring to the truffle mix.

I didn’t originate the recipe, but I have no idea of the source – I’ve seen it around the internet in several places. Since there’s no point in retyping what can be easily googled, here’s a good recipe and write up of how to make them. You can either dip them and place on parchment paper to dry, or directly into mini muffin cups.

Hope you enjoy these inspirations for your Halloween gatherings!

Here’s some other eyeball related yummys via flickr:

From flickr user schmish: Eyeball Soup Cake. Just Wow!

From flickr user overduebook, “they are really simple to make. Start with a lychee fruit in a can. After they are well drained fill them with strawberry jam/jelly and top with a blueberry. ”