Halloween desserts make scary food fun.
Halloween is the time when ghosts, goblins and monsters reign supreme, and Halloween desserts are no exception. Using simple ingredients you probably already have in your kitchen, you can make creepy, gross and disgusting Halloween treats in no time. Just remember some of the basics -- such as blood, body parts and insects -- and you'll be well on your way to creating some of your own frighteningly delicious desserts.
Bleeding Heart
Easily create a yucky bleeding heart or other organ by mixing up a batch of red gelatin dessert according to the package directions with a touch of evaporated milk substituting for part of the required water, then chilling it in a heart- or other organ-shaped mold. Mix corn syrup with red food coloring and place it in a small plastic bag. Turn the jello out onto a serving platter and carefully insert the bag into its middle from the bottom of the mold. Serve by twisting a sharp knife into the center of the organ and letting the "blood" flow out, to the amazement or disgust of your guests. Before serving up the pieces of organ, however, make sure to remove the bag.
Cat Litter Cake
This has become a classic gross dessert, but it's especially fun to serve to all your little (or big) monsters at Halloween. For this dessert, cook packaged white and chocolate cakes according to the directions on their boxes. Cool the cakes and crumble with prepared and chilled vanilla pudding to get that litter texture just right. Sprinkle in several drops of green and blue food coloring and mix slightly. Put several soft, chewy chocolate candies in a bowl and microwave until just pliable. Shape them until they're elongated and curved, so they look like, well, you know. Get a new, CLEAN cat litter box and pour in the cake and pudding mixture. Randomly mix in the chocolate candies so some are buried and some are visible on top. Then you're ready to serve your dessert with -- what else? -- a kitty litter scoop.
Dried Sore Scabs
OK, this is an easy one. Take dried cherries, cranberries, raspberries or other red fruits, and pile them artistically in a bowl. The trick with this dessert is all in the labeling. Call them "Dried Sore Scabs," and you're likely to scare away more than one Halloween guest. Meanwhile, go ahead and snack on them. Scabs can be healthy and delicious! By the way, you can do this same trick with peeled grapes, labeling them as eyeballs. You get the idea. The possibilities of label trickery are endless.
Graveyard Desserts
Lots of Halloween desserts play on the graveyard theme. You can make individual brownies as individual graves, with headstones made out of frosted sugar cookies cut into headstone shapes. Scatter gummy worms or bugs for that special graveyard effect. Consider draping white cotton candy here and there around the graves to look like spider webs. You also can make a full-size, chocolate-frosted cake and set up chocolate or frosted sugar cookie headstones. Write spooky messages on the headstones with frosting about how the unfortunate souls died, or, if you can't think of anything, a simple "R.I.P." will do.
Tags: chocolate candies, Dried Sore, Dried Sore Scabs, food coloring, frosted sugar