Image by Holly Bell
I do love Halloween though I have never been trick or treating. It's just not in my British nature to knock on someone's door and give out ultimatums. I'd likely apologise or stutter. But any celebration where there's even a sniff of novelty food up for grabs and I'm there. All over it. Here's an idea if you fancied hosting a Halloween party of your own.
Some jelly worms that happen to be nestling on a spiced apple cupcake covered in Oreo 'dirt':
I used two packs of regular full fat jelly (Hartleys I think) to make my worms. Just make up the jelly with half the amount of water it tells you to on the packet, then pour the jelly into a pint glass with lots of bendy straws jammed into it, bend side down, with the bend bit pulled apart and fully extended, but still straight. Leave to set overnight in the fridge, weighing down the tops of the straws if they're bobbing upwards.
The next day fill a tall container up with half boiling water and half cold water. Remove a straw from the pint glass (makes a satisfying squelching sound) and then dip into the water for 1 second. Use your finger and thumb to squash the straw at the top (non bendy end) and push your finger and thumb pinched together all the way along the straw to push the worm out onto a plate. First time I did it the water was too hot and the worm melted. Poor worm! Experiment with the temperature of the water until your worms happily squash out without meeting a sticky end. I made about 35 worms I think with two packs of jelly but could probably have made more if I'd had more straws to jam into the pint glass.
If you want to make Oreo 'dirt' firstly I should mention that I got the idea from a lovely lady called Jules who writes an excellent blog called Butcher, Baker and secondly I should mention you will make your life inordinately easier if you buy double chocolate Oero cookies with dark chocolate cream in the middle of the biscuits rather than the white stuff. This way you just blitz the lot in a food processor and the dirt is done. If you buy the variety with white cream then you need to remove this first and then blitz the biscuits. What a pain. I attached the dirt to the cupcakes by simply melting some milk chocolate and spreading a thin layer over the top of a cupcake. Then I dipped the still molten chocolate covered cake into a bowl of Oreo 'dirt'. Done.
Lots more recipes like this in my book, Recipes from a Normal Mum, out now... on Amazon, at Waterstones, The Book Depository and many smaller outlets.
Holly blogs at Recipes from a Normal Mum