Every time I have a Halloween party I make punch with ice hands and put it in one of those huge black plastic cauldrons. The one thing I recommend though is finding a large bowl or pot to put inside. It can’t fit too snugly. This will allow you to put some warm water and dry ice at the bottom of your cauldron, so the smoke will flow out through the gaps. Doing it this way means the dry ice will never be in the punch and you won’t have to worry about your guests touching it. To make the ice hands you will need some surgical gloves that are not powdered. These can be purchased at most drug stores. Rinse out two gloves, fill with water and tightly tie them shut with some string. Lie them flat in your freezer and let freeze for 2 days. Run a small amount of warm water over the gloves to loosen them. Be careful when removing the glove. Use scissors to cut away if necessary. If you lose a finger don’t worry. It makes it even creepier.
The punch can be any recipe you like really. I always use the recipe below and you can choose to add vodka or not. I usually don’t for the people that aren’t drinking.
1 96 oz. Orange Juice
4 48 oz. cans Pineapple Juice
4 2 liter bottles of Sprite or 7Up
1 1.75 liter bottle of vodka
Mix well. Put the warm water and dry ice at the bottom of your cauldron and then put your pot/bowl inside. Pour in your punch and then add your ice hands. The hands floating in the punch is really creepy and your guests will love it.
Every once in a while I throw a big Halloween Party. I love adapting normal recipes into scary ones. This recipe for Witches Fingers was adapted from a Danish Christmas cookie recipe that my Mom always made. Everyone is always creeped out by these cookies!
Ingredients:
2 3/4 c. flour
1 tsp. salt
1 c. powdered sugar
1 c. butter softened
1 egg
1 tsp. almond extract
1 tsp. vanilla extract
3/4 c. whole blanched almonds (skin removed)
red food coloring, preferably paste/gel
Preheat oven to 325° F. Combine dry ingredients. Lightly grease a cookie sheet. In a large bowl, beat together butter, sugar, egg, almond extract and vanilla, beat in dry ingredients. Cover and refrigerate dough for 30 minutes or until firm. Optional: If you want to paint the nails, which I never do anymore, this is the time to do that. Use some red food coloring that’s been diluted with water and brush on with a clean small paint brush. Working with one-quarter of the dough at a time and keeping remaining dough refrigerated, roll heaping teaspoons full of dough into finger shape for each cookie. Press an almond firmly into one end for nail. Squeeze in center to create a knuckle shape and use a sharp knife to make shallow cuts in several places to form knuckle. Place cookies on the prepared cookie sheet and bake for 20-25 minutes or until lightly golden. Let cool for a few minutes. Remove from cookie sheet and let cool on a wire rack. Repeat with remaining dough. Optional: Dip ends of fingers in red food coloring. Makes about 5 dozen.
* Not an actual picture of my cookies. I didn’t have one. This was taken from another Witches Fingers cookie recipe, but they look pretty much the same.
What’s with all of the blood drinks lately? Apparently the world is obsessed with vampires. I’m not sure how I feel about the general public coming to the dark side. Sometimes when things go mainstrean it messes them up. I enjoy looking for scary things. I don’t want to go into Target to find my next blog item unless it’s in their Halloween section. Anyway, the latest drink to hit the shelves is Blood Energy Potion made by Mana and Health Energy Potion. This one they have tried to make as realistic as possible. Unfortunately I have yet to be blessed with a sample like the other Blood Drink I covered the other day. So there will be no review for this yet. It only comes in a fruit punch flavor. Though it contains no actual blood it does have the same color, look, and consistency of blood. As it says on the website, “Get real blood nutrients without that real blood taste!” The fun part is it comes in a re-sealable transfusion bag pouch. Unfortunately this will not be released until January of 2010. Bad luck if you wanted to make your vampire costume more authentic for Halloween. I will be putting in an order for mine at $5.99 each and plan to review it when I receive it next year.
Apparently being a blogger of all things scary does have it’s privileges. I received this new drink that just came out called Tru Blood. I actually received it before my life went haywire, so I am a little late in reviewing it. This is brought to us by HBO to tie in with the show True Blood. The bottle is red with a black cap and the label says O Positive, Tru Blood, Blood Orange Carbonated Drink. The presentation is great. Now on to the flavor. I hesitate to say if something is good or not because obviously that is up to each individual to decide. I will say for myself and the three other people who tried it that we were split. Two of us liked it and two didn’t. Here’s my opinion. When you first open it there is an orange smell. The first taste you get is actually very good. Very fruity and refreshing, but not orangey as the smell would suggest. Unfortunately the taste quickly disappears and leaves you with the taste of artificial sweetener. I tried to drink a whole bottle, but really did not enjoy it. Again, this is all personal taste. Of course I don’t like Diet Coke either and there are people that swear by it. Don’t take my word for it. Try it yourself and let me know what you think.
Back in the late 60s Topps Chewing Gum, the same company that produced the baseball cards, released a line of trading cards called Wacky Packages. Actually most of them were stickers. The cards spoofed well-known brands and packaging. They ran for about 2 years and then started again in the 70s and have since been released on and off over the years. I do have a faint memory of them from when I was a kid, but not during the initial run. Apparently they are very collectible now. Especially the early ones. There is even a coffee table book called “Wacky Packages” out now that pays tribute to them.
I know you are probably saying, “But Jane, what is so scary about that?”. Well, I spend a lot of time on the internet looking for things for this blog and I came across this and had to share. It’s Scary Jane candy! At first I thought it was real candy, but then after some research found the history of Wacky Packages. I wish they actually made this. I would have so many uses for it. I could use it as my business card or give it away as prizes on the website. Oh well, I will continue to dream of what might have been…
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