Unlike some of the awesome bloggers on Slashfood, I am embarrassed to admit that I am not a baker/pastry chef by any means. In fact, the entire process of baking boggles me - from the frustration of measuring to the aggravation of having to use 82 separate bowls (but why do I have to mix the milk and the egg in a separate bowl, can't I just immediately add them to the butter and sugar?), baking and I typically don't see, well...eye to eye (pun definitely intended).

Not believing me when I told her I couldn't bake, my mother, a baking whiz, got me a super-cool cookbook, Claire Crespo's Hey There, Cupcake, filled with almost too-adorable-to-eat cupcake recipes and decorating techniques. So, with a sudden streak of confidence, I poured through the book until I found a recipe that looked doable: the Eyeball Cupcakes. They're rich vanilla cake with a delectable buttercream icing.

Take a look at my unique step-by-step process in the gallery below (unique essentially because I do not own a mixer and I ran out of vanilla extract halfway through, forcing me to call my mom in a panic). Check it out.

This is the perfect drink for a Halloween party (or if you just feel like scaring some friends a little bit). It is called a Bloody Eyeball Martini and starts out as a straight martini, with gin and vermouth. The "bloody eyeball" accent is made by carving most of the red peel from a radish, leaving a few strips of color to look like veins. Once it is peeled, a small hole should be carved at the top and stuffed with a pimento olive, which represents the iris. After your eyeballs are ready, just store them in the freezer until you're ready to use them. If you don't mind watering down your drink a bit, you can actually freeze the eyeballs in an ice cube tray filled with water, which would be a great way to prep them for use in punch, where you don't necessarily want radishes and olives floating around on their own.

At the very first Halloween party I can remember, which was when I was about 7, there was a series of boxes, covered in black cloth, with holes cut out so that you could reach in and feel whatever was inside. There were eyeballs (peeled grapes) in one box and brains (slippery cooked spaghetti). I can't recall if there were any others, but I was not alone in my refusal to stick my hands into the mystery boxes. The idea of touching some mystery substance, especially an icky one, was not appealing at all.

Now, I know perfectly well that they were just grapes and noodles and, like so many others, actually enjoy a good scare from time to time. To this end, the best thing to do is to throw a Halloween party, since the even event makes it socially acceptable to scare people a bit. Atmosphere is easy to achieve with a trip to just about any party store, but the food is more difficult. Fortunately, there is a whole guide to making a really creepy Halloween dinner that will have your guests feeling queasy for at least a course or two, even though the food tastes good. Alien Autopsy Shooters or Eyes in Blood Sauce, anyone?

Click past the jump to see a video of the dessert heart being carved up.

via grow-a-brain]

I was in line in the supermarket last night, and the woman behind me told her son, around 10 or 11 years old, that if he wanted he could run to get some ice cream. About 5 minutes later the kid came back.

With frozen eyeballs and green slime.

He picked up Fear Factor Pop Ups, from Popsicle. These little frozen concoctions look like regular Pushups, but they have "extreme" colors and big eyeballs on the top of them. Let's take the copy straight from the web site:

"In sour cherry with an eyeball gumball and sour watermelon, both with the shocking taste of sour lemon slime. Or the slime pop - sour watermelon flavored ice with sour lemon slime." (Do those lines even make sense?)

The mother, needless to say, was not pleased with her son's choice. In fact, I think I heard her say the word "no" about 17 times. The poor kid was heartbroken when she told him to take it back and get something "normal." But he didn't cry, so good for him.

I didn't even know they made food products based on reality shows. I'm not looking forward to Big Brother Cake or Blind Date Juice.