Cheese Straws at Smitten Kitchen. I bring these to holiday parties and they are always a crowd favorite. The dough is made entirely in a food processor and it’s easy to make a whole lot of these because you don’t need to wash the food processor between batches.

Cranberry Shrub and Cranberry Shrub Cocktail at David Lebovitz. Note: He uses pumpkin spice bitters. I’m no lover of the PSL but I could get way into these bitters.

Salt-Wilted Brussels Sprout Salad With Hazelnuts and Goat Cheese Recipe at Serious Eats. Better than driving somewhere with stinky hot Brussels sprouts. Trust me on this one.

Cranberry Brie Bites at Delish. Looks pretty and easy.

Mama Stamberg’s Cranberry Relish, at NPR. Will this year be the one where I make The Relish? This recipe calls for being fully frozen and thawed so it’s perfect for those who prefer to plan ahead.

How to Make Stuffing in a Bundt Pan at Baking Bites. I think I miiight just be more delighted with a bundt-shaped stuffing being offered to me rather than a bundt-shaped cake.

Pumpkin Creme Brulee, at Munchies. I wonder how much trouble it would be to make a lot of smaller versions of these.

I think about this photo from Shutterbean’s My Everyday Life series every time my cookbook club is dividing out leftovers. Getting a stack of cheap to-go containers from a restaurant supply company would make me feel very smart, if only I could remember to get them ahead of time.

Also: If you can beg to bring home extra stuffing so you can make these Stuffing Fritters with Cranberry-Jalapeño Sauce, from The Kitchn.

I didn’t get a chance to make any Halloween food this year but here are three of the people who have been inspiring me:

Brave Tart’s amazing gingerbread house in pretty intimidating but she shares a huge amount of information on how to get everything looking just spooky enough. The page includes recipes, templates and instructions on assembly.

Ann Reardon shows us how to make a Gravity Falls themed jar of eyeballs and a horrifying gelatin hand. Her video has all the tools, instructions and recipes you’ll need. Also, her remake of the bleeding Taylor Swift heart cake would work really well for Halloween.

Here is a collection of Christine McConnell’s Halloween party food including this amazing Jack-o-lantern cake, with recipes and assembly instructions. Also check out the caramel spiders, I jump a little every time I see the pictures. Yikes.

Sprinkle Bakes has been keeping an advent calendar of giftable food recipes and it’s very handy.

See also: union square cafe’s bar nuts and homemade irish cream from Smitten Kitchen. I’m thinking of an Irish Cream vs. Eggnog event. Yes? No?

How to Make Your Sugar Cookies Taste Better – Chowhound.

Lottie + Doof » Lottie + Doof Gift Guide 2016.

The 2016 kottke.org Holiday Gift Guide.

Might Girl always has the most amazing Where Did You Find That? style gift guides.

The 2016 Good Gift Games Guide – defective yeti. Your annual infusion of which tabletop games are worth it.

Steel Thumbnail | Cool Tools. Considering how often I find myself using my real thumbnail to pry things I’d definitely get use out of this small key chain tool. I suspect it would make a great little present for those very practical people in your life.

My only gift recommendation for this year is the Riedel “O” series Coca-cola glasses because they are the most perfect object to drink a can of sparkling water out of and also they are on sale for 50% off right now. (Note: affiliate link.) I have one of these glasses in my house after attending a Reidel tasting event last year where I came home with a set of six glasses and this is the only one I use on a daily basis. It makes drinking sparkling water an outright elegant experience and as a result I drink a lot more water than I normally would. May I suggest it as a good gift for the La Croix lover in your life?

Trick or Treat! Artist Makes Spine-Chilling Lifelike Halloween Sweets – ABC News. Those candy spiders are incredible.

Spooky Worm Halloween Jello – A Spicy Perspective. This is creepy and very simple.

BraveTart’s House of Horror: How to Make a Super-Spooky Halloween Gingerbread House | Serious Eats.

Olive puff pastry bites recipe – All recipes UK. The look like eyeballs and also look delicious.

DIY Hanging Spider Balloons for Halloween, at Studio DIY.

Gooey Monster Eye Cookies at Lil’ Luna. These are simple and suitably creepy.

‘Leggo My Eggo!’ and More Creative Pancakes from The Pancake Project | Serious Eats. Eeek.

Amazing Banksy “Flower Thrower” Costume, at Make.

Red Velvet Cinnamon Roll Guts | Kitchen Overlord.

Monster Popcorn Balls | Sprinkle Bakes.

Pretzel Broomstick Appetizers for the Etsy Blog! | Sprinkle Bakes.

DIY Giant Balloon Ghosts, at Oh Happy Day. These don’t use helium so they are an affordable giant balloon option.

Chocolate Skull Cake, at Inspired By Charm. This is excellent, and uses my favorite cake pan.

chocolate peanut and pretzel brittle | smitten kitchen.

What’s the Right Way To Make A Hot Toddy? | Mental Floss.

Cocktail Party Gingerbread Folk | Sprinkle Bakes. They include little foil wrapped booze filled chocolate bottles, what a splendid idea. See also: Gift This! Santa’s Candy Bark.

Brunch Cocktails- Cranberry Ramos Gin Fizz – Craft and Cocktails. Via Design Crush.

SANDY OLD MAN ON X’MAS | Lady and Pups – an angry food blog.

eggnog waffles + a few favorite kitchen things | smitten kitchen. I’m bookmarking this for #4: a deeply dark Dutched cocoa that has an Oreo taste. Interesting!

The Best Cut-Out Sugar Cookies Recipe | The Kitchn. See also: Roll Out Sugar Cookie Dough Before Chilling It.

Everything Bagel Bombs, at the Amateur Gourmet. I used Adam’s instructions for Momofuku’s bagel bombs last year and it became an instant tradition. You can freeze these before baking and put them into the oven right from the freezer, perfect for a low fuss fancy breakfast option when the focus is on opening presents.

How to: Hanging Twig Christmas Tree » Curbly.

NORAD’s Santa Tracker Began With A Typo And A Good Sport : NPR. This is an amazing story.

A few years ago I made Trick Or Treat Cookies for Halloween and back then I noted that I’d love to do an all-coffin version. And look! It only took me three years!

I decided to imprint the tops with wood grain using a mat meant to imprint on clay, something I first spotted on Martha Stewart (video, there with Jeff Daniels on an April Fools episode). Doing a little research I found Haniela’s (video) has also created these, and her instructions are wonderful. She’s got a lot of great videos for Halloween baked goods, check out this Monster Eye Cake.

I bought my wood grain mat from a local pottery supply store, it’s the wood grain mat sold by Chinese Clay Art. There is a larger wood grain impression mat for fondant on Amazon. (I would have bought that one if I’d had time, also note: affiliate links.)

When you’re cutting out the cookies roll to 1/4″ thick. Roll the dough between two layers of parchment paper, this will keep the chocolate cookies nice and dark. I have a tiny kitchen so I roll dough on my dining room table using a medium sized Roul’pat. It’s pricey but I adore it, it grips the table and the parchment nicely so things don’t slide around, it gives me plenty of space to work on and I can roll it up to store away.

You’ll need one woodgrain top, one flat bottom and two layers of hollow sides for each cookie. I made these with two hollow layers in the middle, instead of the single layer from my original Trick or Treat Cookies, to allow for more room for candy. I used round cutters to cut out the insides because it was far easier than trying to trim out the middles and laziness ruled that day.

I used dark chocolate candy melts to use as glue because it sets faster, but if you have the time real chocolate would taste better. Use a plastic bag with a very small corner snipped off, no need to get out piping tips or a decorating pen for this one.

Gathering candies to go inside was a lot of fun, I wandered around a particularly well stocked candy shop long enough for the employees to get curious and start suggesting spooky candy for me. Here I have:

• Autumn colors mini gummy worms
• chocolate coated popping candy (There are also apparently Chocolate Pop Rocks out there somewhere!)
• dark chocolate crisp pearls (These come in other flavors and are insanely good sprinkled on ice cream.)
• gray colored Milkies (silver M&M style candies.)
• walnuts coated in chocolate and rolled in cinnamon, which look dusty and spooky but taste amazing
• Wilton candy eyeballs (They also make a red veined version.)
• Wilton skull and bones sprinkles

I wish I had bought the salted licorice black cats because it would make for an interesting good/bad surprise depending on who gets it inside their cookie. I’m pro licorice myself. The wrapped chocolate eyeballs shown here didn’t actually fit in the cookies so let’s all just ignore them. La la la. (Note: affiliate links above.)

Here is the best thing I learned from doing this project: clay art or pottery supply stores are excellent places to get interesting baking supplies. Wandering around Seattle Pottery Supply I saw a whole bunch of tools meant for fondant or baking and I was stunned by the amount of plunger cutters
that allow you to make teeny tiny cookies. Next time I have some creating baking in mind I’m planning to head to the pottery supply store first.

Click more for the recipe: [Read more →]

Here are the things that have caught my eye this Halloween:

FOOD

Eyeball on a brownie created by Christine McConnell. She’s made a candy eye look so much more threatening than simple sugar. Also take a look a the other treats she created. And the house she decorated. And basically everything else she’s done, it’s stunning.

Prosciutto Wands at Martha Stewart. I first encountered these back in the summer but they instantly made me think of Halloween. Very simple and easy to interpret as ghastly when set on a darkly decorated table.

Bleeding Heart Cake (video) by Ann Reardon at How To Cook That. This is a recreation of a cake in a Taylor Swift video but this entirely edible construction for holding hidden goo until you cut into it deserves to be used for Halloween.

Halloween Witch Hat Surprise Cookies at It’s Always Autumn. Easy to make and very cute, bonus points for mixing some candy eyes in with the other treats inside.

NAILS

Creepy 3D Ghost Face tutorial from PiggieLuv (video). This uses gel polish built up in layers, creepy. Via this Halloween nail art round up at Brit+Co.

Halloween DIY Googly Eye Manicure at Design*Sponge. Silly and simple. If you’d like something even simpler take a look at the VandalEyes nail stickers at Espionage Cosmetics, both types glow in the dark!

GAMES

Dark Echo. You can’t see the monsters but you can hear them. I played a demo of this at PAX this year and even standing in a large room filled with people I was frightened when I would finally encounter something that was stalking me. (Mobile on the App Store, Google Play, Amazon Apps and on Steam.)

Spider: Rite of the Shrouded Moon. This is the second Spider game and this one is larger and tells a much darker story. You maneuver a spider around an estate and it’s grounds and find clues as you explore. If spiders freak you out you can play as a tiny walrus instead, which is hilarious. (Available in the App Store, Google Play, Humble Store and Steam, later for Vita and PS4.)

LISTEN TO

All In Your Head at the 99% Invisible podcast. They detail how the sound designer behind the television show Hannibal made sounds that make us uneasy.

Caitlin Doughty of Ask A Mortician on the Explain Things To Me podcast. A great interview on how she got started in the death business, how embalming became common and what she wants done with her body when she dies. Also listen: Another interview on the Nerdette podcast.

Charles Manson’s Hollywood, a twelve part series on the You Must Remember This podcast. Karina Longworth follows the series of events and the who, how and what sort of society of the time led to the Manson murders. There is meticulous research and in depth stories of the people surrounding Manson’s time in LA. It’s worth looking at the webpage for each episode to see photographs from the time.

Two Halloween playlists for your party needs: at Oh Happy Day and the Marloween 2015 at The Amber Show.

QUESTION FOR YOU

Has anybody tried those lace temporary tattoo masks? Do they stay on for the duration of an evening? I want to try out the various temporary tattoos that are out for Halloween (zombie bites, spiders, masks) but I’m afraid they would flake away after only an hour or so.

Remember last year when I went a little manic over dyeing eggs in an effort to get juuust the right colors? Yeah, me to. All the instructions and tips are over here.

Winter Punch Recipe – 101 Cookbooks. Citrus, fresh ginger, gin and rosemary. Yum.

How candy canes are made by hand. at Kottke.

Gluing a gingersnap cottage (like a nerd), at Instructables. Directions on how to make your own sugar glue gun inserts.

Watch the Building of the Most Complicated Gingerbread House Ever | FWx. From the people behind Modernist Cuisine.

Holiday Music 2014 | The Amber Show.

How to Make Christmas Tree Napkin Fold – DIY & Crafts – Handimania. Via Swissmiss.

Why Tory MP is the father of all Bernards – Telegraph. Screenwriter Richard Curtis (Love Actually, Three Weddings and a Funeral, etc) nearly always has a character named Bernard in his films, a character who is treated quite badly, this is why. I’m delighted to know that Bernard and the Genie is also named for this reason.

I love gift guides but, honestly, I find myself using them most often for the sources they draw from so please allow me to just go ahead and tell you about the spots I’m using for ideas this year:

Kickstarter at MoMA – That neat stuff that was on Kickstarter but you might have since lost track of? Here it is! Also see: the whole gifts section. (I’ve been eyeing that Bubble Necklace for a few years now. Not a hint. Ok, yes, it’s a hint.)

Good Gift Games at The Morning News – An annual curated list of tabletop games by Matthew Baldwin and one of those things I look forward to every year. I know the guy in person and can vouch that all these games have been well tested over rounds of beer with good people at good pubs. I’m going to throw my support on the Marrying Mr. Darcy: The Pride and Prejudice Card Game and also call up a past game that is a most-played in my house: Forbidden Island.

Cool Tools: Mark’s Picks and Under $10 – Have somebody on your list who is a Maker or very practical or just plain hard to shop for? Cool Tools will have a suggestion for that one thing that they might not already know about. Among the most well received gifts to family that I’ve given have come from past Cool Tools recommendations including a craft assistant setup for a model-making family member and guitar tuning devices for my part-time rock star husband. (If said giftee just likes knowing about neat things they might love the Cool Tools book, which I fully admit to becoming engrossed in myself, it’s huge like a coffee table book and packed with information like a catalog.)

Brit+Co Shop – Among the many awesome things in this shop I’m particularly in love with the Gold Leaf Valet Kit with Lovely Indeed, the customizable wood burnt Cheese Board with Design*Sponge and the wooden Pop-Out Ornament Cards. See also: the whole Tech (Bluetooth Camera Shutter Remote for an iPhone!) and Merrymaking Color Block Muddler!) selections. Full disclosure and blatant self promotion: this winter I have my own collaboration with Brit+Co for a set of mini gingerbread house mug topper cookie cutters which, as of me typing this, should be back in stock to purchase on Friday 12/12/14. Update: The DIY Kits have sold out, thanks to everybody who purchased one!

What are your favorite sources for the difficult to shop for?

Here are the decorations I’ve collected to decorate the tiny gingerbread houses that decorate mugs which I’ll be making this year. The houses are so small that decorations to be sprinkled on are all you need. I tend to keep an eye out for holiday worthy sprinkles and decorations all year long, so some of these might have had me contemplating the holidays in the middle of July.

Crushed candy canes – Easy, colorful and festive. Also, candy canes are easy to find at the corner store or, say, in the lobby of your bank so you don’t need to make a special trip to find sprinkles. (If you use the pre-crushed sort I promise I won’t tell.)

Nonpareils – Tiny and crunchy and if you get one of those containers with sections for six different colors you can create your own color mix.

Sugar pearls – These are like giant nonpareils, I found these at a discount store.

Itty bitty edible gold foil stars – Itty bitty edible gold stars! These are amazingly cute. I’ve found these sold by Wilton in the baking aisles of Michael’s and Joann stores as well as specialty cooking shops.

Gold dragée – I want more gold in my holidays so I was thrilled when I found these. Unlike their silver counterparts these are safe to eat since they’re made using edible metallic dust.

Oversized sprinkles – Colorful like twinkle lights. These are from Wilton and they make me very happy.

The next three options are great for creating a simple snowy roof:

White nonpareils – I like the details of a sweet covering of precious little snowy white balls.

Sanding sugar – The larger sugar crystals sparkle nicely.

Edible glitter – I bought this at a specialty cake supply store where the owner assured me that the edible glitter is the best for reflecting the sparkle from twinkle lights. I’ve done a terrible job at conveying that in this photo.

The last row are all from a decoration set that came in one container.

Holly leaves and berries – Sweetly festive.

Tiny snowflakes – You can place these individually if you want, or just sprinkle them on and let randomness do it’s job.

Tiny candy canes – Much to my dismay they don’t actually taste of peppermint, but all is forgiven because they are terribly cute.

Don’t forget! This winter I’ve collaborated with Brit+Co on a DIY kit which includes cookie cutters for my tiny gingerbread houses! It makes creating the gingerbread houses very easy. Go have a peek!

I’m so utterly thrilled to announce this collaboration with Brit+Co to create a DIY kit for my tiny gingerbread houses that sit on the edge of a mug!

The kit includes two cookie cutters that are 3D printed (!!!) and each kit comes with a mug, a pen for decorating or personalizing the mug and recipes for gingerbread and royal icing. May I suggest that the kit would make a wonderful holiday gift? Even if just for yourself?

They’ve created a complete DIY tutorial for baking and assembling the house.

I couldn’t be more pleased, go have a look!

If you need to do some last moment Easter Egg dying these instructions will help you create simple, vibrant eggs using supplies from the grocery store.

A few years back I spent some time using good old fashioned food color to dye very saturated and vibrant eggs for my Easter Surprise Eggs project. I wasn’t quite happy with a few of the colors made back then so this week I set out to refine the process and what went from an easy and cheerful activity quickly turned into obsessive madness as my kitchen and dining room were turned into an egg dying laboratory. Timers were used, results were carefully examined and tweaked, charts were made, home production assembly lines were perfected. (A whole lot of my manic energy came from the fact that most of my week was spent with various crews of workers fixing our ceiling. I’m glad to report that the room is very nearly back to normal.)

The most fun part? I had an excuse to buy eggs in those large flats of 30. I never get to do that!
[Read more →]

My Easter treat for this year is a couple of giant Kinder Surprise eggs. Look at how big they are! It’s shown here with a regular sized Kinder Surprise Egg for scale and a Mini Kinder Egg which I added because I happened to find them in a local shop.

The Mini Kinder Eggs are filed with hazelnut paste and bits of hazelnut. They are delicious and I recommend you grab some if you see them.

If you’d like to see what was in my giant Kinder Surprise eggs click through for all the details. (If not I’ll be back later with a spectrum of vibrant eggs dyed using food coloring!)
[Read more →]

I’m not very focused on Valentine’s Day this year, we usually cook a fancy meal and stay in but this year we’re feeling a bit of cabin fever so we’re headed out to see the Lego movie and get cocktails at our favorite local bar. I might still get a little creative, here are some last minute Valentine’s ideas that have caught my attention.

Printable pop culture valentines over at Mighty Girl. See also: her roundup of nerdy valentines.

Valentine’s Day cocktails at Serious Eats. I’m also looking at their bitter anti-Valentines cocktails.

A simple paper heart garland that can be whipped up with office supplies, at Just Bella.

Last minute Valentine’s Day party at Oh Happy Day, a few simple things you can probably grab at Target to make staying in a celebration.

Bake a heart (or a broken heart) into a cupcake from Bake It In A Cake. (I’m still in love with all her ideas.)

I’m not a huge fan of cut flowers (because I’m thinking ahead to when I inevitably leave them too long and end up with dead flowers and a moldy vase) but my favorite Valentine’s gift remains this String Of Pearls plant (even though we’re on version #3) which Scott admits he bought me on the way home from work.

I hope you have a romantic Valentine’s Day, unless you’re dreading Valentine’s Day in which case I hope you have a really amazing Friday.