Peppercorn Press

I have fond memories of Halloween in my childhood home. My sister and I would of course put on our costumes and go home-to-home proclaiming “Trick or Treat!” and collecting enough candy to thoroughly rot our teeth. Then we would return home to sit on the floor in front of the television still in our costumes and watch Disney’s animated version of Washington Irving’s, The Legend of Sleepy Hollow.

As we got older my sister became more creative and began concocting elaborate haunted houses and parties Halloween food from those parties are in the Halloween Recipe Collection.

I can remember a year where we had a guillotine that had a wooden blade that would come sliding down to “behead” the damsel that was unfortunate enough to have been drafted for the role of Marie Antoinette. That year we also had a bowl full of slimy eyeballs that were nothing more than skinless grapes, yet felt both very convincing and disgusting when you were blindfolded and asked to put your hand in the bowl. One of my favorite effects was a bubbling witches cauldron that she filled with lemonade and 7-Up and colored with green food coloring. After the punch was poured into a black plastic bucket, she dropped in dry ice to make it boil, bubble and smoke.

My sister is six years older than I, and the Halloween parties that she would host for our friends had to be not only fun for my playmates, but they had to impress her cool older friends too – that included over-the-top Halloween food! Many of the recipes in the Halloween Recipe Collection began as our first attempts to impress other ghosts, ghouls, and beasts.

Now that I am older and have a child of my own, I am always looking for new ways to create something special for her Halloween and I am very thankful that I had a creative sister for starting me on the road to the fun foods in the Halloween Recipe Collection! I hope that some of the recipes will inspire you.

Chef Darren