I decided to make a centralized page with all the recipes of my own and of other people that I use for my annual Halloween party.  Some of the are extremely simple using store bought things and dressing them up, some are pretty complicated and require time and a little skill in the kitchen.  I hope some of them come in handy for someone!

 

My absolute favorite thing to cook is cheesecake.  I make several for the "other" big holiday (one to keep, the rest to give away to family and friends) and a few throughout the year for special occasions, like Easter and big parties.  I've had people beg me to make them for them, offer to pay for them...etc. Cheesecakes are relatively easy to make, there are just a lot of steps to it, and it's pretty time consuming. I started off making them from recipes about 10 years or so ago, then just kinda of combined all those recipes into my own recipe that works the best for me. I don't like pumpkin cheesecake, so this is kind of how I get a little festive spin on it. This is the basic recipe:

Deanna's Baked Cheesecake

¾ cup margarine or butter, softened
1 ¼ cup all purpose flour
3 tbsp flour
¼ cup sugar
1 ¾ cups sugar
3 egg yolks
2 tbsp lemon juice
5 8-ounce packages cream cheese
5 eggs
¼ cup heavy or whipping cream
¼ tsp salt

  1. In small bowl with mixer at low speed, beat butter, 1 ¼ cups flour, ¼ cup sugar, 1 egg yolk and half of lemon juice until dough is well mixed.
  2. Refrigerate, covered, for one hour. Preheat oven to 400°F. Press 1/3 of dough into bottom of 10-inch spring-form pan. Bake 8 minutes, cool.
  3. Turn oven to 475°F. In large bowl with mixer at medium speed, beat cream cheese just until smooth; slowly beat in 1 ¾ cups sugar until smooth.
  4. With mixer at low speed, beat in 3 tbsp flour and remaining ingredients until smooth. At high speed, beat 5 minutes.
  5. Press rest of dough around side of springform pan to within one inch of top; do not bake dough.
  6. Pour cheese mixture into pan; bake 14 minutes. Turn oven to 300°F; bake 45 minutes. Turn off oven; leave in oven 30 minutes. Remove; cool in pan on rack. Chill.
  7. Remove from pan, serve it up!

Now, for Halloween (or when I want something with some extra flavor) I add chocolate to it. I used to just mix in cocoa powder with some of the cream cheese mixture and give it a marble blend... but now I've learned the joys of GANACHE! I just mix up a small batch of ganache (or use the extra leftover from other projects) and coat the bottom of the crust before I put in the cream cheese mixture. After I pour in the cake mixture, I drizzle more ganache on top in a spiral starting in the center of the batter and moving out toward the edge. Then I take a butter knife and pull it through the top of the batter from the center outward to create a spiderweb design. Then I bake as usual. It adds just the right amount of rich chocolate to an already rich cake and makes a nice Halloween-ish design. I add a little spider to the top (or you could make some of Britta's spiders) and it's a good-looking dessert.

Every year, I try to add something new.  In 2007 during the summer, I was playing around in the kitchen, and came up with a pretty decent little concoction made from beef sausage and fresh veggies on a bed of wild rice.  I thought it would be a good dish to serve up for the party since it was really easy to make.  This is the simple family dinner size recipe, you can double or triple as needed for parties.

Sliced Snake and Veggies over Maggots

1 package Beef Sausage

2 tbsp olive oil

1 green pepper

1 large onion

1 8-oz package mushrooms

1 cup mini carrots (or 3 regular carrots)

3 medium zucchini (or yellow squash- or both!)

Salt and pepper

  1. Start the rice.  I usually just use a boxed wild rice mix.  It takes about 30 minutes for the rice to cook (depending on brand and type)
  2. Cut up all the vegetables into bite sized pieces: julienne the carrots for quicker cooking, slice mushrooms into 4 quarters each, keep zucchini and squash in larger pieces or they will get too mushy. 
  3. Preheat large skillet with 2 tablespoons olive oil.
  4. Cut the sausage into bite sized rounds and set aside.
  5. Cook veggies all together in skillet, with a little sprinkle of salt and pepper, just until the onions start to get translucent and the other veggies get a little soft.  You don't want to over cook them, especially the zucchini.  Remove from heat and transfer veggies to another dish.
  6. Cook sausage in same pan just until hot and remove from heat.
  7. Pour prepared rice into large dish or casserole, then place veggies over it, then the sausage.  Serve it up!

 

One thing I like to do for serving dishes, is to use real pumpkins.  The large ones can be cleaned and gutted as you would for carving, but without cutting a face out for a Jack O' Lantern.   I cut a notch in the pumpkin's "lid" for a serving spoon to stick out and the stem makes a good pot handle to lift the lid off.  You can put pretty much anything inside that you would normally use a pot or large bowl for.  I use them for my meatballs every year.

When the party is over, I just wash them out, scrape out the insides again, then put them in the refrigerator until Halloween, when I carve them as usual.  This way, they get to serve double duty!

 

I also like to use the small mini pumpkins for holding condiments like mayo, mustard, dips, sauces and things like that.  I just carve them out like I would a big pumpkin, leaving a notch in the "lid" and fill them and stick a Halloween themed spreader in them.

 
More coming soon!

 

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