Thursday, October 29, 2009

Thank goodness for gummies!

Their gustatory merits might be arguable, but you have to admit that gummy worms & gummy insects are a lifesaver (I toyed with making this whole post full of candy puns, but I restrained myself). Schoolkids all over town will be having Halloween parties tomorrow, and parents have been scrambling to think of cool thematic treats. Gummy worms are the perfect accessory, and Ghoulish Goodies: creature feature cupcakes, monster eyeballs, bat wings, funny bones, witches' knuckles, and much more by Sharon Bowers will show you how.

  • Create a repulsive worm pie by mixing Jello and gummy worms in a clear dish (the recipe calls for using lemon Jello, but I found that if you mix up lemon, lime and orange Jello powder together, the resulting color is a nice puke-green).
  • Roll your gummy worms in cocoa powder to give them a more realistic dullness, and plop them in pots of 'dirt' (clear cups of chocolate pudding covered with ground-up Oreos).
  • Fill a little goodie bag with ground Oreos, and hide a couple of gummy insects inside for the kids to discover.
  • Gummy fruit slices, dotted with chocolate-covered sunflower seeds, make great monster eyes for decorating cupcakes and cakes (Bowers' example is a fabulous tentacled green sea monster cake).
  • You can really jazz up simple chocolate-frosted cupcakes by decorating them with gummy worms (try to make the worms look like they're poking up through the frosting 'ground').

Quick and simple prep, ingredients that are easy to get (you might even have the cake mixes and Jello boxes sitting in your pantry), and a fun Halloween look make these treats perfect for school parties. There are plenty of other recipes - including dishes that would appeal to grown-ups - in Ghoulish Goodies. The hard part is choosing which ones to make.

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