Gingerbread houses may have some competition this year for edible Christmas decorations. Williams Sonoma has just released a new, limited edition Snowy Village Cakelet Pan for the season. The pan bakes up six small cakes in the shapes of show-covered fairytale homes. The cast-iron pan is made by NordicWare (as are just about all of Williams Sonoma’s special edition pans), so it’s a heavy-weight pan. It also has a nonstick finish to help preserve some of the details of the cakes when you release them onto a cooling rack before baking.

Most cakes are going to look cute on a cake stand, these cakes can actually become part of your decor. You can set them out at the beginning of the evening during a holiday event and leave them out to be admired before serving. They don’t need much decoration, but a dusting of powdered sugar will give them some “snow” and a few dots of colored icing and you’ll have a string of Christmas lights going around the entire village!

Last year, I decided to try to incorporate food into one of my Halloween jack-o-lanterns in addition to the usual array of scary, smiling pumpkin faces. It worked out well and I came up with a creepy skeleton hand holding a cupcake. This year, I wanted to try my (non-skeleton) hand at incorporating food into my pumpkin carving again. I considered trying to go with a slice of pumpkin pie, or some other pumpkin dessert, but ultimately decided that the cupcake would be an ongoing theme. This year’s pumpkin is called “I vant a cupcake.”

It was inspired by my Vampire Cupcakes, showing a fanged pumpkin face about to dive into a moist, cherry pie-filled cupcake and ready to suck up the filling. This is one of my first attempts to sculpt a design into a pumpkin without actually cutting straight through the pumpkin itself. I used a zester that had a large opening for making twists (to garnish drinks) to carve away the outer rind in the area I wanted to put the cupcake, then used regular pumpkin carving tools to cut away the rest. I free-handed the whole design, so I can’t share a template, but one tip that will help you is to thin the pumpkin wall from the inside. A thinner wall will not only be easier to carve, but it will let more light through if you decide to try and sculpt your design.

I’m including a detail of the cupcake below, if you want to take a closer look at how I carved it out. I tried to make the outlines and lines of the wrapper deeper and brighter, while keeping the frosting more rounded and billowy. (more…)

One of the first food-related, creepy Halloween things that I learned to make was a big ice hand to float in a bowl of punch. You make this by filling up a latex (rubber or similar) glove with water, tying it off like a water balloon and freezing it, then peeling the glove away when you’re ready to use the ice hand. It looks neat floating in a bowl of punch, especially if you have some dry ice in there, too. The only drawback is that the ice hand is big and clunky, and not ideal if you’re going to be serving anything other than punch at a party. So, this year, I picked up some Bone Chillers, a silicone Skull and Bones ice cube tray.

I really like the shapes and the tray is just as easy to use as a hard plastic tray, since you simply peel back the tray to release the ice cubes. Even better is that this tray can double as a mold for other things, like candies, fudge, truffles, marshmallows or anything else that you might want to make into a little skull and bones shape. The only downside is that the tray makes just eight ice cubes at a time. I started two days ago, emptying and filling the tray again - not continuously, just when I had the chance - and now my icebox is full of cute and slightly menacing Halloween ice cubes!

I found these on sale at a local store and have seen them all over the place, even at bookstores like Barnes & Noble and Borders, so keep an eye out to pick some up (probably at a good price) before Halloween.

While pumpkins fit perfectly into Halloween just as they are, jack o’ lanterns have an even more perfect fit because Halloween is really the only holiday where the carved pumpkins are showcased. There are lots of pumpkin-shaped baking pans, like the Pumpkin Patch Pan and the Mini Pumpkin Cheesecake Pan, but there aren’t a whole lot of pans that incorporate the jack o’ lantern face into the design, leaving you to rely on frosting to achieve a spooky look. Fortunately, there are a couple of great looking pans that have pumpkin faces molded right in, so all you need to do is bake and serve.

The pan pictured above is the John Wright Pumpkin Muffin Pan. It’s a cast-iron pan that has distinctly cut shapes and bakes six large muffins. It also works well for cornbread, especially if you like the “crust” that cornbread can get when it cooks in cast iron. Wilton makes two Jack o’ Lantern pans. The first is a Petite Jack-O-Lantern Pan, an aluminum pan that bakes bite-sized pumpkins and can be used for cookies or mini cakes. The second is the Pumpkin Faces Pan, which is made of silicone for easy removal of the muffins or cakes when they’re done, preserving their scary smiles without worrying about your treats sticking to the pan.

I love a good Halloween recipe as much as anyone, and there are plenty of great recipe ideas out there that are both spooky and sweet - perfect for the holiday. But there are lots of behind-the-scenes tips that can help make your Halloween celebrations go a lot more smoothly and even add a bit of extra flair to your tricks and treats. Here is a list of helpful how-to’s that should really get the holiday prep off to a good start.

• If you’re going to try making Vampire Cupcakes or Slime-Filled Cupcakes this year, take a look at the how to make a filled cupcake tutorial, which will streamline the process and ensure that you have as much filling in there as possible to give the cupcakes a nice, juicy center.
• Caramel apples are another good seasonal treat. Starting out with the best apples for making caramel apples will make the treats perfect. Sweet-tart apples are usually the best choice. Pippins and Jonagolds are both well balanced. Opt for Granny Smith if you like them really tart.
• Chocolate-Covered Witch Hats are easy to make and make a great addition to edible Halloween displays. Use them to top off cupcakes, cakes or even just a simple scoop of ice cream.
• Carving pumpkins is one of the key elements of Halloween. Pumpkins can have a foodie aspect to them, as well as a frightening one, like this Creepy Cupcake Pumpkin, which features a skeleton hand clutching a glowing cupcake!
• After carving your pumpkin, put the seeds to good use and make some homemade toasted pumpkin seeds
• You can also make your own pumpkin puree for baking pies and cupcakes, but I would recommend using a sugar pumpkin or other small winter squash, as the larger carving pumpkins tend to be quite fibrous.
• If you want to go all out for the occasion, consider staging a Scary Halloween Dinner party. A little bit of gelatin, some creative naming and a good use of textures results in a menu that includes Chilled Brain Spread and Eyes in Blood Sauce. They look ghoulish, but taste great, and you get to play with your food while you prepare everything!

I suspect that vampires aren’t big breakfast-eaters. They’re probably more of the midnight snack type. This is precisely why I was inspired, as I was looking for a late-night snack during an evening of pre-Halloween scary movie watching, to make these vampire pancakes. These are buttermilk pancakes made with a red, raspberry jam filling that oozes out when you cut in for a bite.

The pancakes are quite easy to make. You start with a fairly standard pancake batter with a little bit of vanilla extract thrown in and pour some onto a preheated griddle. Next, you add a dollop of raspberry (or other red-colored) jam to the center of the pancake as it cooks. It’s a good idea to try and spread out the jam as you place it on the pancake, even putting several little dollops. At this stage, the pancake batter is too delicate to stand up to being spread with jam, and it’s really nice if the jam fills up as much of the pancake as possible. Top the jam with some more batter to cover it completely and cook as you would a regular pancake.

When the pancakes were fresh off the griddle and the jam was still warm, they were moist and tender, with a nice ooze to the filling.  You can taste the vanilla and buttermilk in the pancakes alongside the jam. These pancakes were sweet enough that they didn’t need any additional syrup or toppings before serving, but whipped cream might be a nice touch if you want to serve a little on the side.

I used the same technique that I’ve used on my Vampire Cupcakes and Vampire Cookies to add bite marks to these pancakes before serving. I’m sure that any vampires out there would approve, even if they might prefer a different flavor of filling for their portion.

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