If you judge the spirit of Halloween by recipe books, it seems the occasion is taking on a cannibalistic flair.

Check the Internet, check out the library and ask the kids what they want to feast on this Halloween and one thing comes up over and over – eyeballs. Nowadays kids also want to treat themselves with a few jellied bones and best of all they like munching on a red finger-shaped sugar cookie with juicy red stuff oozing from the nail and the knuckle. All these screaming-ugly tasty treats are easily made with a little trick-or-treat drama and heavy reliance on red food colouring.

Old recipe books often suggest making doughnuts for Halloween treats. The custom goes back to the original All Hallows’ Eve meaning of the festival, which was the day before All Saints Day. All Hallows’ Eve was a time to celebrate the souls of that year’s dead. With the harvest in, it was a fitting time to meditate upon death and dying.

Doughnuts were known as “soul cakes” and in England were handed out to beggars, who came to the door demanding, “Soul, soul, an apple or two. If you haven’t an apple, a pear will do.”

The Halloween party of 2012 will focus more on the body parts of the dead than on their souls. And judging by the kind of candies for sale in the stores, there will be a huge demand for jelly-candy insects too. Jelly-candy worms, ants and beetles are wonderful and tasty additions to any Halloween dish and look especially enticing in a bowl of green Jell-O.

Traditional Popcorn Balls or Brain Cake

lb. popcorn

1 c. sugar

1 c. white corn syrup

1 small pkg. orange gelatin

(Optional – jellied worms and chocolate chips)

Red icing gel

Pop popcorn. Bring sugar, syrup and gelatin to a boil, stirring until everything is dissolved. Pour over popcorn and mix until coated.

While still warm, form into balls or press into a Bundt cake pan.

To give the appearance of a brain cake, mix in chocolate chips and jellied candy. The chocolate melts nicely and gives the whole thing an even more luscious, brainy appearance. Use the red gel to give the brain-cake veins and arteries.

To make eyeballs, flatten warm popcorn balls with the palm of your hand and put a black jujube in the centre. Use red-gel icing to circle the eyes.

Dem Bones Dem Bones

20 stick pretzels

40 miniature marshmallows

lb. white chocolate, melted

Stick a marshmallow on each end of a pretzel to form an arm bone. Dip the arm bone in chocolate.

Dracula’s Teeth

1 pkg. Pillsbury chocolate chip cookie mix, baked

Prepared white icing

Red icing gel

Miniature marshmallows

Bake the package of chocolate chip cookies or bake your own recipe for the cookies. Cool and slice in half. Frost cookie halves with icing and stick together. Put tiny marshmallow pieces between the cookies to look like dentures. Carefully outline each tooth with red icing gel.

Cauliflower Innards

1 c. buttermilk

1 c. flour

2 tsp. garlic salt

1 head cauliflower, broken into pieces

2 tbsp. melted margarine

1 c. Frank’s Hot Sauce

Mix buttermilk, flour and garlic salt until smooth. Dip the cauliflower chunks in the batter and bake for 15 minutes at 400 F.

Mix the margarine and hot sauce together. Use to coat the cauliflower and then return to the oven for another 5 to 8 minutes, until crisp and hot. Serve immediately.

Black-widow Spiders

Peanut butter cups for the spider bodies

Chow mein noodles for legs

Chocolate chips with red icing dots for eyes

Stick eight legs into the chocolate circles. Put two white icing dab circles on the spiders. Put a chocolate chip in the centre of the icing and top with a red gel dot to make eyes.

Grandma’s eyeball eggs

Hard-boil eggs. Slice when cool. Remove yolks and mix with mayonnaise and a little mustard. Spoon the yolks back into the eggs, as you would for devilled eggs. Cut a black olive in half lengthwise and place it in the centre of your eggy eyeball.

Place eyeball eggs in middle of a plate of avocado guacamole and tell your guests it’s green slime.

Wormy doughnut eyeballs

Instead of frying doughnuts, purchase a dozen white-sugar coated Timbits.

Give these 2012-style doughnuts ghoulish flair with a black gumdrop eye and coat everything with a line of red-icing gel to resemble a bloodshot eye. These doughnuts look seasonally appetizing if they have a jellied worm hanging down from the top. Candied apples are also improved greatly with the addition of a worm, which hangs artfully from the centre core.

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