Texas Sheet Cake

The beauty of gummy worms is you can turn something tasty, but not creepy, into a great Halloween treat just by adding one or two of these bad boys. That's how this cake from Trina Bowers came to be at our Halloween night, anyway! I gotta say, I've had lots of sheet cake, but this was my favorite yet! It was thick and fudgy, somewhere between cake and brownies- just how I like it!


CAKE:
2 C sugar
2 C flour
1/2 tsp salt
1 tsp soda
1 C margarine
4 heaping tbsp cocoa
1 C water
1/2 C buttermilk {you can use 1 tsp vinegar or lemon juice in a 1/2 C container and add whole milk until full. Let set a few minutes}
2 eggs, beaten
1 tsp vanilla


Mix dry ingredients together; set aside. Bring margarine, cocoa and water to a boil and pour hot over dry ingredients. Mix together and add buttermilk, eggs and vanilla. Pour into greased and floured jelly roll pan. Bake at 400 degrees for 20 minutes.


FROSTING:
1/2 C margarine
4 heaping tbsp cocoa
5 tbsp milk
1 tsp vanilla
1 lg box powdered sugar

While cake is baking, bring first 3 ingredients to a boil add vanilla and beat in powdered sugar. Pour and spread over cake while warm.

Jack-Orange-Lantern Fruit Cups

Audra Simpson really impressed us with her offerings! Don't you just love these? I don't know where she finds the time to make these things so darn cute, but I'm glad she does! Again, this isn't really a recipe- more like instructions:


1 navel orange per person
favorite fruits, bite size


Cut the top of the orange in a zig-zagged circle. Use a small spoon to scoop out the orange pulp. Use a small, sharp knife to carve out a face in the orange rind. Fill with your favorite fruits.


You can use other oranges, but navel's are typically larger and have a firmer rind making it easier to carve. Another perk- the citrus of the orange will keep apples from browning, so you don't have to worry about opening the top and finding a bunch of brown triangles!

Halloweenies with Mustard Dip

Besides being super cute mummies, these Lil' Smokies wrapped in crescent rolls would be an awesome appetizer at a Halloween party. Catrina Bowers found this at Pilsbury.com. I'm thinking Halloween lunch...

1 can (8 OZ) refrigerated crescent roll dough
44 cocktail-size smoked link sausage
1/2 C creamy Dijon mustard
1 tbsp dried oregano leaves


Heat oven to 375 degrees. Line two cookie sheets with cooking parchment paper. Roll dough sheet out to one large rectangle, cut vertically to make two 11x7" rectangles. Cut crosswise into total of 44 strips. Pat sausages dry. Wrap 1 strip of dough around each sausage to look like a little mummy; press firmly at each end to secure. Place on cookie sheet 2 inches apart for even browning. Bake 15-20 minutes or until golden brown. Meanwhile, in small bowl, mix mustard and oregano. Dot a small amount of mustard or catsup to make eyes {Trina used a baby medicine dropper for this, which worked out great}. Serve sausages warm with mustard dip.


I had made something similar for lunch a few days earlier with full sized hot dogs. Directions are pretty similar, but it took 1 can crescent dough to make about 6 hot dogs, 8 if you leave space between the wrapping. I made the eyes with a little ball of cheese.

Frankenstein Spaghetti Brains

This won the prize for being the cutest! How fun is this? I am absolutely doing this for dinner on Halloween! Nicely done, Audra Simpson! However, she took an idea and made it her own, so there isn't a specific recipe... Here's what we were given:

Thin Spaghetti noodles, cooked, drained
1 jar spaghetti sauce
Parmesan cheese or mozzarella cheese
1 green bell pepper per person
2 olives per person


Toss the noodles and sauce. Add cheese. Cut the top off each bell pepper and remove the seeds; carve a face and holes on each side for the olive "bolts". Spoon the spaghetti into the bell peppers and plug holes on sides with olives. Bake at 350 degrees for 10 minutes or until cheese is melted.

*If you intend to eat the bell peppers, you can bake them a little bit to your desired tenderness before spooning the spaghetti in.

Red Velvet Cupcake Eyeballs

I'm sure I've seen this idea a hundred times, though no particular one prompted these cupcakes. It's not a new idea, by any means, but I've added an extra dose of macabre by making them on red velvet cupcakes. That way, if the eyeballs aren't scary enough, the way your kids look after eating them will be! Case in point:

The bath tub looked like a crime scene after this! As if that weren't enough, this is by far my favorite red velvet recipe with a yummy cream cheese icing and surprise filling. Also makes an excellent valentines day treat- minus the optical orb.

CUPCAKES:

1 pkg red velvet cake mix, plus ingredients as called for on box

1 (3.9 oz) pkg instant chocolate pudding mix

1 (8 oz) pkg cream cheese, softened

1/2 C butter or margarine, softened

1 pkg (16 oz) powdered sugar (about 4 cups)

1 C thawed Cool Whip

Prepare cake batter and bake as directed on package for 24 cupcakes, blending dry pudding mix into batter before spooning into muffin cups lined with cupcake paper and sprayed with cooking spray. Cool. Use the handle of a wooden spoon to make a hole in the top of each cupcake.

Beat cream cheese and butter in a large bowl with a mixer until well blended. Gradually beat in sugar. Whisk in cool whip. Spoon 1 1/2 C into sandwich or qt sized Ziploc bag; seal bag. Cut small corner off bottom of bag. Insert tip of bag into the holes on the cupcakes and pipe about 1 tbsp frosting into center of cupcake. Frost cupcakes with remaining frosting.

EYEBALLS:
I used LifeSaver gummies for the irises and upside down chocolate chips for the pupils. I used decorating frosting to pipe the veins.

Valentines day:

Top with shaved white chocolate curls or sprinkle red decorating sugar over a stencil to make a heart.

Jack Skellington Cupcakes

When Jennifer Fulton walked in with these we immediately recognized the iconic Halloween face of Jack Skellington of "The Nightmare before Christmas". And the little guys who may be a tad young for the movie will still recognize a fun, slightly creepy face- this was emphatically requested by her 3 year-old son. Added bonus: If you needed to make a bunch of cupcakes or just wanted to mix it up a bit, you could have a pile decorated half with these guys and half with the eyeballs found here.

1 batch chocolate cupcakes
White buttercream frosting
2 toothpicks
1 tube black decorator's icing


Frost the cupcakes with the buttercream frosting. For each cupcake, use the tip of a toothpick to lightly etch the outline of two large Jack Skellington eyes in the frosting . Slowly pipe black decorator's icing onto the etched lines and then fill in the inner circles. Use another toothpick to spread and smooth the icing. {Jenn used a baby spoon and said it worked great} Pipe on two short lines for a nose. Next, pipe a long line across the bottom of the cupcake for the mouth. Randomly top the mouth with a bunch of short icing barbs.

Appetizers

Loved Appetizer night! I'm thinking we're going to have to host a Super Bowl party and have a repeat of these recipes! Sorry it took so long to get them posted... I had some catching up to do! Ya know, leading up to the Exchange, I was wondering if people were getting as much out of these nights as I was. I love the chance to try new things, talk to new people and my favorite not-new people. I love getting out of the house and stimulating my mind in ways other than the most efficient way to change a diaper or how I'll be able to work the kid's naps around my 'to do' list. As hilarious as 4 year old jokes are {What time is it when an elephant sits on your slide? Time to get a new slide!}, I love sincerely laughing at something I haven't already heard 5 times that day! But I always wonder if anyone else looks forward to it the same way!

I'm not as worried about that anymore! It was so much fun with great food, mom talk, jewelry tutorial from Joni, and great conversation. I walked away from that Exchange on a high!

So, I am grateful that this thing is going well. I am thankful for the WONDERFUL friendships I've made because of it. I am thankful for all the AMAZING recipes I've been able to add to my repertoire. And I am thankful to announce the next exchange! Thursday, the 20th, we'll be having a Halloween and Thanksgiving theme! FUN foods for the holidays. Recipes that look as fun as they taste! Trina Bowers will be hosting this time, so we'll see you there!