Halloween Workshop Photos

We had a really fun time last week teaching a Halloween cooking workshop at Groton library.

Thanks to Deborah for inviting "Let's All Cook"to come and share our recipes with a great group of teens. I'd like to share with you the photos we took of our evening.


Grilling the quesadillas


Cutting the quesadillas


Halloween Quesadillas with Sickly Salsa

Spooky Spider cookies


Graveyard Dirt Puddding


Making Vampire's Blood Punch

Devilled Eye Balls

Serving Ghoulish Gazpacho

Halloween Recipes for Kids

My Halloween workshop is coming up next week and I've come up with some really great recipes for "kid's to make themselves". I'd love to share them with you all, so that you can make treats for your family and friends or plan your holiday party. Have fun!

Halloween Recipes for Kids

Ghoulish Gazpacho or Vampire's Vomit is actually a delicious cold soup full of healthy veggies. It can be served as an appetizer in shot glasses or small cups.

Devilled Egg Eyeballs are hard boiled eggs stuffed with a spicy filling. Red gel is piped on for blood shot veins and then they're topped with olives for spooky eyeballs.

Halloween Quesadillas with Sickly Salsa - These quesadillas are filled with orange cheese and black beans, then served with a really sickly looking salsa!

Witches Fingers. Cookies or rice krispie treats are colored green and shaped like fingers. A red painted almond (fingernail) is then pressed into the tip to make a creepy treat.

Graveyard Dirt Pudding. Serve this ghostly dessert in individual cups and each of your guests can decorate their own with cookie gravestones, spiders and gummy worms.

Spooky Spiders. These haystack cookies are made with chocolate, raisins, nuts and crunchy chowmein noodles which stick out like spider's legs.

Vampire's Blood Punch. This icy blood red beverage is so spooky it has eyeballs floating in it!

Fall is Apple Season

"Let's All Cook" cooking classes are off to great start! Thanks to all the kids and parents for a really successful and "delicious" class today. Our recipes today were based on the new crop of apples now appearing in our New England orchards - Apple galettes ( a free form apple pie made with a cream cheese pie crust) and Homemade Pop Tarts (made with the same pie dough). If you've never made a cream cheese pie crust, please give this a try, especially if you've had problems rolling pie dough. The cream cheese makes the dough really malleable and forgiving and is quite fail safe. Always try to refrigerate the dough for at least 30 minutes, this gives the butter a chance to harden up and will make the crust more flaky.

If you're cooking with your kids, it's always a good idea to make individual portion recipes if you can. Kids really don't to wait for over one hour for their food to cook, so many of my recipes are for individual servings, such as pies or mini cheesecakes, which take less than one hour to prep and bake.

This recipe for Apple Galettes is great for kids, once the dough is made, each kid gets to roll out their own piece, fill it with apples, form the pie and then glaze it with egg white and sugar. It's their very own pie from start to finish and they are usually more likely to eat it!

Looking for great family day out? Try pick-your-own apple picking in one of our many orchards in Massachusetts. I've only lived here for 6 years and so this activity is still a novelty for my family and me. I have visited several in the Acton area, namely Carlson orchards and Westward orchards in Harvard, and Berlin orchards in Bolton, which even has a hayride and pony rides. For a more comprehensive list of orchards, see pickyourown.org and don't forget to visit the local pumpkin patches and corn mazes later in the month.

My mom Shirley at Carlson orchard.