The curse of Halloween food blogging is that many of my Halloween delicacies, made up for the Halloween party, are done at the last minute.  So I can’t write them up very well before Halloween, and it seems silly to post the recipes AFTER Halloween.  So I was noticing that some of my really cool Halloween treats are relegated to quick photo posts, rather than giving them the treatment they deserve.  To fix that, here is the ‘how-to’ on my world famous Mozzarella Eyeballs, classy enough for the fanciest Halloween dinner party!

Recipe/Technique: How to make Marinated Mozzarella Eyeballs

Supplies:

• Big firm olives (black & green).  Try the olive bar at your local grocery, or you can go for the canned stuff.  The olives need to be firm, not squishy.  Jarred black olives work perfected fine for the pupil.
• A large diameter drinking straw (I find McDonalds straws to be the perfect size) .
• Marinated mini mozzarella balls.  I get mine at Trader Joe’s.
• Optional: jarred red pepper slices.

My original version of this just used sliced pimento stuffed green olives, but then I saw the Evil Mad Scientists and their Eyeball Caprese, and adapted that technique to my appetizer.  You basically use the olives to make your nice rounded iris and pupil.  For the most rounded, slice of the end of a green olive, then use your straw to punch a hole in the center.  Then slide of a piece of black olive, and use the straw to punch out a plug of black.  Then place the black piece in the hole of your green olive.  If it does stay level with the green, you can use a little cream cheese stuffed in the open end of the olive to hold the black in place.  You can also do slices off the side of the green olive, but be aware they will be slightly oblong.  you can see I did a little of both for mine in the photo.

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!

More Summer food inspirations from Foodwhirl.com:

Tres Leches Pancakes

“My awesomely cool friend Rachel pointed out these on her Facebook, and I had to link them here.  We’ve featured Tres Leches Cake here before (yay, Niki!)  but I know some of you won’t go bake a cake.  But everyone makes pancakes, right?  They aren’t scary.  So check out these Tres Leches Pancakes at Givers Log.”

Lunch Ideas: Salmon Cucumber Sandwich

“Need a nice, healthy lunch, or a light dinner?  I adore fish sandwiches in the summer, and salmon and cucumber are always a nice mix! I love to cook an extra salmon filet or two (to medium rare) when doing salmon for dinner (maybe Chili Garlic Salmon?), then heating it up the next day for a quick lunch.”

Birthday Party Brunch

“With the summer so hot, when I recently planned my son’s birthday party, I decided to do it as early in the day as possible to beat the heat a bit. And since we were inviting both kids and adults, we needed ‘real food’ for everyone to munch on. A brunch was a relatively easy and cost effective way to feed everyone and have a great gathering…”

Cooling off for the Summer

“I hope everyone is gearing up for a lovely Weekend!  Here in Atlanta it’s going to be beautiful, but HOT… So, here are some ideas for cooling off! ” Including: Make a Cucumber Gimlet at Crumpets and Cakes!  Or maybe some Homemade Herbal Lemonade. Pictured: Star Shaped Fruit salad from Chica & Jo.

Spotlight: Sushi / Ceviche

“I spotted this gorgeous idea this morning, at Cristina – from Buenos Aires to Paris, and thought “wow, 2 of my favorite foods – why didn’t I think of this combination?”  Needless to say, this looks divine! Dreaming about vacations by the sea? Late summer nights sharing dinner with friends?”

Basil Chicken (Gai Pad Krapow)

“I’ve been on a kick of Asian inspired food lately (like this Easy Pad Thai!) and this one looks like an excellent choice… A simple Thai meal! Basil Chicken (Gai Pad Krapow) at No Recipes. Thai Basil Chicken is one of those dishes that fits squarely in the category of best-bang-for-your-buck.”

Penne Pasta with Cream, Pesto and Tomatoes

“I’ve been experimenting with selling herbs at the local farmers market recently and the one that seems to sell the best is basil.  I always seem to sell out early.  So this last market, I took double what I normally take and guess what….. I didn’t sell it all.  …”

Greek turkey burgers with yogurt and feta

“This sounds like a delicious application for ground turkey, from the very helpful The Perfect Pantry! Why does a whole chicken taste better than a whole turkey, but ground turkey tastes better than ground chicken? I don’t have the answer, but I always have ground turkey in my freezer.”

Cajun Shrimp & Okra

“I had the urge the other night to make some sort of dish with shrimp, to use up some shrimp broth in my freezer. I had a pound of shrimp, and also some frozen okra on hand, so I figured that was just screaming to go Cajun or Creole (Let the good times roll with Shrimp Creole!).”

And if you’re not reading Foodwhirl, why not?  It is yummy tasty good over there…!   Here’s the Foodwhirl RSS Feed.. for new recipes delivered mostly daily!  And Foodwhirl’s Facebook or Twitter if you’d prefer to follow us that way.  So go stop by and say hi!  You’ll find me over there, plus lots of other real cooks cooking real food.

Janelle Says:
“I made pop-tarts today.” That wasn’t a sentence I thought I would say. I made pop-tarts from scratch!

The crust was super easy to make, the longest stretch of ‘work’ was the rolling, measuring and cutting into proper rectangles. But then, the filling was super easy: I just used nutella, jam and a quick cinnamon blend. SO worth the time.

And then, the ultimate test: the freezer. I froze a number of the pop-tarts between sheets of parchment (then inside a Ziploc). Then a few days later, popped them straight from freezer to oven, and you know? They turned out beautifully. I am on a newish mission to fill my freezer with everything from ragu to entrees and chicken stock, tomato sauce and pesto. I want to figure out what ‘works’ in the freezer and what doesn’t. Having my freezer be my kitchen friend means I have meals ready-ahead-of-time, homemade chicken stock when I need it or breadcrumbs at the ready. It is nice to be able to pull together a meal—or slide pop-tarts from freezer to oven—with all the ‘work’ already finished.

Go read the whole thing… she gives several different filling recipes. I’m so going to try this!

One of our guest contributors did a great writeup on how she made her Marshmallow Chicks (commonly known as Peeps). She claims they aren’t very pretty, though, so we’re challenging you to do better! Melissa provides the instructions, plus tips on how to make yours better, over at Foodwhirl!

Buy them or the pattern to make them at her etsy shop

~OR~  How about a fancy looking dessert from very humble origins?

I adore this great idea from Dollar Store Crafts – Make these lovely little Twinkie Bon Bons from the tutorial Heather did at Odeedoh.

More cool links:

Make crepe paper poppies with instructions from a very chocolate wedding (via oneprettything)

A Ladybug party, complete with a clever cupcake cake tower (also via oneprettything)

I’m pretty sure I DON’T want to eat this impressive Victim of Hannibal Lector cake seen at Superpunch.

Found Object Butterflies found by me @Dudecraft.

Nifty!  Pancake experiments at Omnomicron..

And here’s some gorgeous Berry Marscapone pancakes from the Picky Cook!

Just Wow on this impressive Jello Mold!  (via Craftzine)

Geeky Goodness! The Science Cookie Project at the Kitchn

And here’s a few great looking recipes (all via Foodwhirl.com!)

• Muscadine Wine Poached Pears
• A great use for leftovers (roast pork enchiladas)
• Whole-grain carrot and cheese crackers

Wow, that was pretty food heavy on the links today!  I must be hungry…

EDIT: I just added another – a way cool Homemade Fireplace Screen!

Happy friday everyone!

My husband and son eat a granola bar for breakfast almost daily, and while I’m always stocked on the store bought ones, sometimes I like to make them from scratch. It’s an easy process — very kid-helping-friendly, too. And it takes an hour at most from start to finish (including 25 minutes bake time)
The variations on these are endless. I actually made 3 different flavors in this batch, 1 Chocolate Chip, 1 White Chocolate, and 1 Ginger/White Chocolate, but the ones that really popped were the Ginger & White Chocolate variation. The spicy candied ginger is a wonderful contrast to the sweet white chocolate. Read the whole thing and get the recipe..

We’ve features her fabulous work here before (here, and here), and she has graciously given us a tutorial on how to make some lovely V-day cupcakes.

See below for

• The Vanilla Cupcake recipe
• How to Decorate them

(a few translations from us Yanks, to the best of my ability: Icing Sugar = Powdered Sugar.  Castor Sugar = a superfine sugar, which you can purchase in speciality stores here in the states, or make by pulsing regular sugar in a food processor or coffee grinder)

I’ve included the pages as printable pdf’s at the bottom…

Download:

• Vanilla Cupcake Recipe – by Naomi Henderson
• Decorating Valentines Cupcakes – by Naomi Henderson

Thanks so much to Naomi for sharing!

Oh, and by the way, if you like food and cupcakes and dinner and such, check out the new Foodwhirl.com! I’m so excited about it.. stop by!

And don’t forget to soak your black eyed peas tonight, so you can make them for luck in the new year!*

I love Black Eyed Peas… they are healthy, tasty, and generally kid friendly… Growing up my mom made Hoppin’ John for New Years Day — Black Eyed Peas over rice, topped with onion. So I figured I’d share this VERY easy recipe with you for New Years Day. Plan ahead, because it takes an hour to cook. This recipe can be easily halved or doubled, too!

Hoppin’ John

• 1 lb black eyed peas, soaked
• 1 c chopped celery
• 1 c chopped onion
• 2 tsp red pepper flakes
• Ham hocks, or hambone and left over ham from your holiday ham. (Or approx 1-2 cups large ham chunks)
• 1.5 tsp salt (add later and taste first if using smoked hamhocks, as they have a bit of salt in them)
• Optional – a few shakes of Tabasco.

__________________

Serve with hot cooked rice & chopped onion or chopped green onion

Put everything above the line in a large pot, and barely cover with water.
Bring to a boil, then turn low and simmer 1 hour.

(While it’s cooking, go ahead and prepare your rice, and chop up some onions or green onions to sprinkle on top.)

Serve over rice, with onions & Tabasco!

*If you forgot, don’t worry, there’s usually a ‘quick soak’ method on the bag.

So everyone have fun and everyone be safe tonight!

Oh, and tonight when you’re sipping your champagne, be sure to save those champagne corks and wires. (Make a Tiny chair!)

Happy 2010 Everyone!

xxoo
Dot

So… I decided to make a FSM (Flying Spaghetti Monster) out of a radical combination: Spaghetti and meatballs.  No, these aren’t just stacks of spaghetti, with meatballs on top, these are true meatball creatures… suitable for your own Flying Spaghetti Monster, or whatever you’d like to create!

I used a technique similar to the one I used for the Halloween Cephalopods (thanks to Filth Wizardry for the idea!).

Ingredients:

• Frozen Swedish Meatballs (I used the ones from Ikea), 2 per monster. (Defrosted)
• Thin Spaghetti, dry.
• Several tubular noodles (I had some elbows on hand, but this would probably work better with a larger type.)*
• Green peas for eyeballs.

Instructions:

1. Fill your largest pot with water and place on stove  to boil.
2. Stab a long noodle into your meatball.  Stab a second meatball on to your noodle.
3. Repeat so they are stuck together.
4. Continue stabbing your 2 meatballs with 1/2 to 1/3 length dry spaghetti noodles (see pic).  Leave some open areas for the meatballs to show.
5. Insert a tubular noodle into each meatball to serve as an eyestalk.
6. Place in boiling water until noodles are soft.
7. Remove, cool, and insert a pea (or a piece of a pea) in each eyestalk for the eyeball.

Organize on a plate, and enjoy!  Add sauce as desired…

Caveat:  I did have issues with the eye stalk noodles falling off.  Perhaps they would have worked better with a larger diameter noodle.  I’ll also be experimenting on alternate eye stalks!