So, the how-to and the recipe:

The recipe is super simple, and surprising healthy, as far as dips go.  It’s popular with both kids (my 7 year old loves it) and adults!

Ingredients:

• 1 package Cream or Neufchâtel cheese – leave a room temperature to soften.
• 1 6-8oz piece of salmon, cooked (Just sprinkle with salt & pepper, and cook in whatever manner you want.  You could grill it, or put in under the broiler, or cook it stove top)
• 2 Tablespoons Sour Cream
• Optional:  Sriracha sauce, or Tobasco, to taste.
• Lemon juice

Remove skin from the salmon, and break up your salmon into small pieces.  The finer your salmon is, the more it will look like brains, but honestly, I prefer to keep the chunks a little larger.

Stir up your cheese and sour cream, and add your salmon and sraracha, and a few squirts of fresh lemon juice to brighten the flavor.

The next step is to mold it into a brain shape.

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.

Place in the middle of your favorite silver platter, add slices of french bread or crackers, and serve to your favorite Zombie!

Dabbled friend Tissuepapers writes: “This year I really wanted to create something really gruesome to serve at a friends Halloween party. I came up with this recipe that was inspired by my childhood arch enemy Freddy Krueger. He was the terror in my dreams when I was younger, chasing after me with those razor sharp claws.

I took a spin on the basic recipe for baklava. It reminded me of skin with its many layers of phyllo dough. Once baked it has the crispy look of baked skin!!”

Go read the whole thing, and get the recipe!

So why am I showing you this now, since Halloween is a whole year away?  Well, I think it would be a fun (though not overly healthy!) kids meal any time of year, and what an awesome food to serve at a kids party..!

Here is the tutorial/experiment! (And stay tuned tomorrow for an even weirder take on this!)

I decided they looked an awful lot like cephalopods or sea creatures of some sort , and figured we’d play around with different configurations of noodles and see what we got.

Exhibit A: Octopuses (now Jellyfish)

For the first batch, I used the ends of the hotdogs only, and stuck the noodles in one side only.  I was thinking octopus, so 8 noodles per piece, each noodle being about 1/2 length.  (For future, I would shorten the noodles to make them easier to eat.)  Once I put these in to boil, I decided they were much more like jellyfishes than octopuses, especially the way the floated on the water, so that is what they became. (See pictures at the bottom)

Exhibit B:  Tentacle Creatures (or spiders, or cephalopods)

These were the original version, with the hotdogs (slices this time, rather than endpieces) stabbed through with the dry noodle.  So 4 noodles means 8 legs.  The length of these legs was a little better than the Jellyfish, I think.

Exhibit C:  Sputnik

As I was doing these, I was thinking worms, but with the dry noodles still sticking out of them they looked like a Tinkertoy, or maybe a Russian satellite!  These really showcase the creepy aspect of the noodle just sticking out of the hotdog.

How-To

Not much recipe needed here: Just hotdogs (big fat ones) and dry spaghetti.

See the Notes below, and under each of the pictures for more detailed info.

Click on a photo below to see larger or to view as slideshow.

Notes:

• Put your biggest pot on to boil FIRST! That much water takes a while.
• And enlist the help of children if available, this can be time consuming!
• Boil 5-9 minutes, according to pkg directions, or until your spaghetti is done enough for your tastes
• For a more ‘adult’ version, smoked sausages might be a nice touch
  

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

Click through for larger..

Thanks for sharing, Chad! And I can’t wait to taste the final product!

By the way, I will be posting the winners of the Halloween Contest later today!

I just finished up a batch of Sweet Sushi, and later I’ll be pulling these Creep Fingers together, along with my Peanut Butter Eyeball truffles. It’s easy, but I included instructions below:
.

Creep Finger Sticks:

I came up with these (though I’m sure someone somewhere has made them before me!) when I decided I didn’t feel like baking Witches Finger cookies, but I already had blanched almonds on hand.

Large Pretzel sticks (I’m using Snyder’s Rods this year, but the ones pictured were smaller)
Chocolate Bark (white or chocolate) or chocolate chips of any sort.
Blanched whole almonds (one for each stick) (If you can’t find them blanched, just buy raw almonds, and boil for several minutes until the skins just pop off when you squeeze them. Pop off all the skins.)

Set up a drying rack before you start. Something to hold the sticks while the chocolate sets.
Then, melt chocolate in a double boiler or the microwave. Be careful not to over heat.
Dip several inches of the pretzel in the chocolate and affix an almond (or half an almond) at the tip for a fingernail while the chocolate is still wet.
Stand upright (at least half of the pretzel stick will not be chocolately) and let dry/cool.

For the container, you’ll just need a sleeve off an old shirt, and a glass that is the same size (slightly smaller) around as the end of the sleeve. Slide the sleeve around the glass and tack it there with hot glue if necessary.

Fill the glass with sticks, and enjoy!

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

<–Want MORE Creepy Cocktails? New Stuff HERE.

As halloween party time approaches, start thinkin’ about drinkin’! Fancy or scary, halloween cocktails can really jazz up a party.

<– The Brain Hemorage from TangoPango. Looks lovely doesn’t it? Supposedly tastes good though!

Talk of Tomatoes has several yummy sounding halloween drinks, including this Black Widow. –>
Check ’em out. Added 10/29: Another fun drink from Talk of Tomatoes – The Maggotini!

And wow, this Dark Chocolate Martini sounds decadent from Cook & Eat.

Hostess with the Mostess points us to a great Halloween cocktail guide. Very beautiful presentations. Also, lovely ways to label your halloween drinks.

These are nifty. Label your bottles with spiffy poison labels like these free to download creepy apothecary lables from spookshows.com

Have other halloweeny good cocktails?

Related: All Halloween Posts — Halloween Contest

A Dabbled original… well, my friend Erka created it for our party a few years ago, and i have no idea where she got the idea. Anyways, it’s a perenial favorite — disgusting and yummy!

NEW! Directions done as an Instructable, with new eyeball tips!

Basically, you’ll need a face mold. Mine is from the art store. A halloween mask might work as well if you covered the eye holes. Line the inside of the mold with plastic wrap. Cover the inside of the mold completely with proscuitto. Shread it into small pieces first, as large swathes look cool, but are really hard to eat. Then mix up a cheese ball mixture. I think ours has been different every year, but google is your friend. You’ll need probably a double recipe, depending on the size of your mold. Ours usually has shredded cheddar and cream cheese, and something for a spicy kick. Press your cheese ball mixture into the mold, and chill. Remove from mold onto a plate, add eyes using sliced olives. (This idea for making the pupil/iris from the Evil Mad Scientists might be a nice idea as well). Surround the face with crackers or pita chips, and Enjoy~!

Easy Peasy to make and an impressive presentation!

More Halloween Food:
– Eyeballs, both sweet and savory
– Creepy Cakes