Jeannette, a Slashfood Flickr user - who also happens to write a fantastic blog, Everybody likes Sandwiches - shared her recipe for colcannon, traditional Irish comfort food made of cabbage or kale, mashed potatoes, and a healthy dose of butter or cream. Jeannette added leeks to hers (onions or chives are often added, as well).
Colcannon can be eaten anytime, obviously, but it's typically enjoyed around Halloween, and some families hide charms or coins in the mixture. The idea is that whomever finds it has luck for the coming year. There's actually an adorable scene that illustrates this concept in In America, a film about an Irish family who immigrates to America.
It's been a long day here at Slashfood, though with such a sugar high off all the candy we threw at you, it probably seemed to go by fairly quickly! To round out our day of candy in honor of Halloween, let's have a dessert made in the spirit of one of many people's favorite candy, the Reese's Peanut Butter Cup -- chocolate and peanut butter in one.
To make this cupcake, I baked chocolate cupcakes. To be quite honest, whatever chocolate cake recipe that works for you, works for me because in the end, the most crucial part of the cupcake is the Fluffy Peanut Butter Frosting. I've made peanut butter based frosting before, but I used a slightly different recipe this time
Combine ½ c. softened butter with 1 c. creamy peanut butter (if you like crunchy, use crunchy, which is what I've done before). Add 2 c. powdered sugar (sifted after measuring), and up to ¼ c. heavy cream until you get the consistency you want.
Frost your cupcakes, then top with all those leftover Reese's Peanut Butter Cups!
What exactly is a meringue? Would you consider it a cookie because technically you "bake" it? Or is it candy because it's mostly all sugar?
Whichever you call it, I'm including a photo of tiny little meringue ghosts from 101 Cookbooks because they're too cute to pass up on Halloween. Not only are meringues relatively easy to make with just a few ingredients, but this photo of white ghosts is spooky-cute against a black background, and with a hint of their reflection in front of them.
Then again, I didn't think ghosts cast shadows or made reflections!
Really? Do you really think you're going to do that much good by your kids by giving out toothpaste and boxes of raisins at Halloween? You can give that to the kids who come to your door (and they probably won't come back next year), but if your kids go trick-or-treating, they're bound to come back with all sorts of candy and your confiscating it at the one time of the year when it's okay to have a 24-hour sugar rush will make you a monster. It's one day.
Yet, Yahoo! Food channel has picked out their Top Eight Healthy Treats. No use calling it candy because it's not. They aren't fooling anyone, but if you're determined to at least try, here they are (with my comments included in some cases because I just can't help myself):
Let's Do...Organic! Jelly Gummi Bears - these look suspiciously like Vitamin "gummy bears"
Florida's Natural Pocket Fruit-to-Go Stiks - Is this a healthy version of a Fruit Roll-up? And we know how regular Fruit Roll-ups do at Halloween.
Angel Mints - If I got any sort of single hard mint at Halloween, I would be pissed. Don't we get those from the little bowl on the hostess stand when we go out to eat?
Trader Joe's Dark Chocolate Edamame - No, effin' way.
When I was nine years old, my mom didn't give away candy for Halloween. Instead, she passed out travel-sized tubes of sparkly, bubble gum flavored Crest. Some kids thought this was a very cool thing and others picked up a tube, looked at it and flung it back at her yelling, "Hey lady, that's not candy!" We had tubes of that stuff leftover for years. Every time a friend came over to spend the night, they'd have to take some home with them.
She's still not much of a fan of giving out candy, this year she's distributing Halloween pencils. In past years she's had little fingertip puppets and magic markers. For next year I'm campaigning for candy, albeit special candy. The Natural Candy Store sells packs of organic candy, bagged in compostable cellophane. The kids are happy because they are getting candy and she's happy because she's passing out a treat that isn't quite as bad as some of the other options.
Looking for some spooky treats to take to a friend's upscale Halloween shindig tonight? Well, you could buy these strawberry ghosts from Godiva for $4.50 a pop. If that is a little beyond your budget, you could try following these directions over at the Kitchen at Apartment Therapy and make your own. They say that all you need is fruit, chocolate, paraffin wax, a small pot, toothpicks and wax or parchment paper. Sounds like a delicious, if potentially frustrating, project. If you give it a shot, let us know how it turns out!
One of the best things about Halloween is that you end up with a surplus of chocolate and candy that you can use in baking. Leading up to Halloween, it's oh-so appropriate to make things like cupcakes, cookies, and brownies with pieces of chocolate candy bars. After Halloween, you'll have so much leftover (if your kids are good at trick-or-treating, that is) that you won't know what to do with it all. Every year, I do the easiest thing: bake my favorite brownie recipe and throw a little slice of a Snickers bar on top. To be quite honest, the addition makes you look like a rockstar in the kitchen, even though you didn't do much. You can even cheat and use a mix out of a box, but if you're fancy like that, you can use a recipe from Epicurious for Candy Bar-Topped Brownies that use caramel or ganache-filled squares as toppers.
When I was a kid, I was something of a candy fanatic. I'd eat it every chance I could get, and loved the seasonal candy that arrived with great fanfare in the grocery store. One of my favorite Halloween candies was the much-abused candy corn. Sadly, as I've gotten older, I've lost my taste for it to a certain degree, although those first couple of bites are always blissful as I nibble down the color gradations from tip to base.
On Monday in an article in the Baltimore Sun, reporter Rob Hiaasen defends the noble candy corn and traces its origins back to Cincinnati around the turn of the 20th century. Apparently the tri-color design was groundbreaking back in the day, requiring careful, handmade production. Machines were invented to stripe the kernels and soon candy corn was available all year round in an assortment of flavors.
Happy Halloween, Slashfood friends! We suspect that your big Halloween bash was this past weekend, since Halloween falls mid-week this year, but that doesn't mean you won't be trick-or-treating, er rather, taking your kids trick-or-treating tonight. To kick off the candy chaos that's to come, Slashfood is spending the entire day bringing you candy because really, who couldn't use a 24-hour sugar rush?
Does anyone give candy apples to kids on Halloween anymore? I remember getting one once when I was trick or treating. I think they gave it to me either wrapped in a napkin or maybe just by itself, just thrown in the bag. Not sure what I was supposed to do with it after the other candy got on it. I'm talking about the sugar glazed coating, not the caramel variety.
Today is National Candy Apple Day, which fits nicely on the schedule since we're doing Candy Day all day at Slashfood and it also happens to be Halloween.
I like caramel apples more. They're one of those foods you eat a lot less of when you become an adult, but I think this fall I'll make them again.
For Halloween, you can either mix up your own creepy concoctions at the bar and call them by some overly cute name like "Monst-arita" or "Frankentini," but that assumes you're a pretty good mixologist. My guess is that the best you've done outside of your usual is mixing too much Diet Coke with your vanilla vodka. In other words, leave the creative mixing for the professionals.
Still, to keep with the spirit of Halloween, you can serve Halloween-ish drinks by serving them in Halloween-inspired glasses. Why bother messing with your favorite Dirty Martini or Cosmo? Just pour your poison into one of the above glasses, Wicked Witch, Mummytini, and Fright Night, by Lolita.
The glasses are available from Deb's Unique Gifts.
Ah, candy corn. Many swear allegience to it, others can't stand the things. I'm somewhere in between. I like candy corn, but I'm also glad that it's usually eaten and talked about in the fall, right around Halloween (though I'm sure it must be available all year round). I'm not a big candy corn eater, but I don't mind it.
This recipe is rather complex, since you're not just making the cupcake itself but also cherry filling and marshmallow topping, but the effect you get looks like it's worth it.
I wonder if there's another way to do this. Maybe a Sandra Lee Semi-Homemade way. Perhaps getting cupcakes from the store and putting white frosting on them and then putting the holes on top with the red dripping from the holes. Nah, just go ahead and make them at the link above. The recipe makes 18 cupcakes, which is a good amount for a party or for your family.
And as a bonus, when you bite into them it looks even more bloody inside!
It can't be all hard liquor at your Halloween party -- not that you don't plan to sip martinis all night, but some of your guests might prefer beer or wine. For the beer drinkers at your Halloween party, there's Post Road Pumpkin Ale. Each batch of beer is made from hundreds of pounds of pumpkins, which create an orangey amber-colored beer with a pumpkin fragrance. The Pumpkin Ale is available for about $9.
Now here's a tip for chilling and serving that Pumpkin Ale. Get your hands on the largest pumpkin you can find, top it off, hollow it out, clean it, then fill with ice. It's a pumpkin cooler!
The elementary school I attended through 3rd grade had a Halloween parade each year. We'd come to school dressed in our costumes. Around lunchtime parents would arrive with treats, we'd eat our lunches and then gorge ourselves on cupcakes, mini-sized candy bars, frosted cookies in the shape of pumpkins and my mom's popcorn balls.
She never really followed a recipe for them, instead would just pop several large batches of corn and pour it into a large paper grocery bag. On the stove, she'd melt a stick of butter together with honey and brown sugar until it was a sticky syrup. She'd put the bag on several layers of newspaper on the kitchen floor and pour the butter/honey/sugar combination over the top. Working quickly, she'd grab a handful of popcorn and quickly mold it into balls, which would get laid out on a greased cookie sheet. When the balls were cool, we'd pack them in plastic sandwich bags and tie off the tops with curled ribbon.
(If you want a more specific recipe, with measurements and cooking times, check out this link).
Does anyone give candy apples to kids on Halloween anymore? I remember getting one once when I was trick or treating. I think they gave it to me either wrapped in a napkin or maybe just by itself, just thrown in the bag. Not sure what I was supposed to do with it after the other candy got on it. I'm talking about the sugar glazed coating, not the caramel variety.
Ah, candy corn. Many swear allegience to it, others can't stand the things. I'm somewhere in between. I like candy corn, but I'm also glad that it's usually eaten and talked about in the fall, right around Halloween (though I'm sure it must be available all year round). I'm not a big candy corn eater, but I don't mind it.
This recipe is rather complex, since you're not just making the cupcake itself but also cherry filling and marshmallow topping, but 
It can't be all hard liquor at your Halloween party -- not that you don't plan to sip martinis all night, but some of your guests might prefer beer or wine. For the beer drinkers at your Halloween party, there's 
Chocolate-stuffed bananas on the grill
Tyler Florence welcomes new daughter
Beware kids' menus!
