Cute and Easy Halloween Cookies

 

We won't be trick or treating this year, or giving out candy, because of the pandemic.  It really made me think about how nice a tradition trick or treating is, and how much we miss connecting with our neighbors.

So we decided to make some Halloween cookies to drop off on our neighbor's porches!

We made a cookie a day for three days, starting with the longest keeping cookies.  You can also freeze the cookies as you make them if you were taking more time (which is what I do with Christmas cookies).

Our first cookies were these mummy cookies (possibly because we had just watched Abbot and Costello Meet the Mummy).

 

 

 

 

 

Our recipe is here, developed during one of our Ancient Egypt studies.

You could also use any sugar cookie dough- just shape it into sort of flattened peanuts.

We simplified the wrapping marks by making them with forks, and we added little eyes with sprinkles.

The powdered sugar helps accent the wrapping marks.

Next up were eyeball cookies.  

This is ordinary chocolate chip cookie dough without the chips, but you could do it with chips, even with pre-made sugar cookie or chocolate chip cookie dough.

We added raspberry flavor and red food coloring to make them look more monstery, but there are loads of possible color and flavor combinations!

The eye ball parts are white chocolate melting disks with a chocolate chip on top to look like a pupil.

Once baked, the cookies spread a little, but the chocolates held the circle shape nicely.

The raspberry-white chocolate-dark chocolate combination was delicious! 

Lastly we made brownies, mostly because I thought a cookie plate with three cookies has to have more chocolate.  

We used our normal brownie recipe, and then I squirted on some melted white chocolate in sort of ghost shaped squiggles.

I added some fall leaf sprinkles to fancy it up a bit since I thought my ghost squiggles looked a lot more squiggly than ghosty!

Bigger families got more cookies

 

This is what the "plates" ended up looking like (the plates are recycled takeout containers).

We cut out pumpkin shaped tags and wrote little notes to accompany the cookies, then went off and placed them strategically on porches.

Not a normal Halloween, but at least a bit of neighborly connection.

Happy Halloween!

Wordless Wednesday: Pumpkins!

 

Last of the October Birthdays

 

The last two birthdays were Pop's (my dear FIL) and the redoubtable Bill's.

I forgot to get a picture of Bill's cake, but we used this awesome diabetic safe Died and Gone to Heaven Chocolate Cake recipe.

This is Pop's cake, which is made of... meat.

Pop is the grandfather that does not live with us, and he has been locked down very tightly since March.  We miss our weekly dinner visits!

We have been calling every week, but it's not the same, of course.  Anyway, on his birthday, we all went over and sang happy birthday outside of his house and left him this fine cake.

It turns out that his doctor has him completely off sugar.

 

Fortunately, I knew he loves meatloaf!

If meatloaf is just meat shaped into a loaf shape, then surely the same meat shaped into a cake must be meatcake...

Which is easy enough to frost with mashed potatoes...

And decorate with chives and pepper flakes!

I guess we also had Fr. Mark's birthday and Leena's Godmother's birthday in there too, but since they are in New Orleans and Baltimore, respectively, I did not end up making cake for either of them.  

But Happy Birthday to all!

Poem of the Week :

A Ballad: The Lake of the Dismal Swamp

By Thomas Moore

Written at Norfolk, in Virginia

“They made her a grave, too cold and damp

For a soul so warm and true;

And she’s gone to the Lake of the Dismal Swamp,

Where, all night long, by a fire-fly lamp,

She paddles her white canoe.

“And her fire-fly lamp I soon shall see,

And her paddle I soon shall hear;

Long and loving our life shall be,

And I’ll hide the maid in a cypress tree,

When the footstep of death is near.”

Away to the Dismal Swamp he speeds—

His path was rugged and sore,

Through tangled juniper, beds of reeds,

Through many a fen where the serpent feeds,

And man never trod before.

And when on the earth he sunk to sleep,

If slumber his eyelids knew,

He lay where the deadly vine doth weep

Its venomous tear and nightly steep

The flesh with blistering dew!

And near him the she-wolf stirr’d the brake,

And the copper-snake breath’d in his ear,

Till he starting cried, from his dream awake,

“Oh! when shall I see the dusky Lake,

And the white canoe of my dear?”

He saw the Lake, and a meteor bright

Quick over its surface play’d—

“Welcome,” he said, “my dear one’s light!”

And the dim shore echoed for many a night

The name of the death-cold maid.

Till he hollow’d a boat of the birchen bark,

Which carried him off from shore;

Far, far he follow’d the meteor spark,

The wind was high and the clouds were dark,

And the boat return’d no more.

But oft, from the Indian hunter’s camp,

This lover and maid so true 

Are seen at the hour of midnight damp

To cross the Lake by a fire-fly lamp, 

And paddle their white canoe!

HT: Poetry Foundation

 

Baking Projects

 Q. How do you know when you've watched too much of The Great British Baking Show?

A. You decide, on a lark, to make an 8 stranded loaf.  Also you start saying "on a lark" unironically.

It didn't quite come out like it was supposed to...shall we say.

For one thing, it was much too large!  Even after pulling off the messy ends and shaping them into...an interesting shape, it was much too large.

My dad, whose glasses hadn't come in yet, thought it was a turkey.

And the side loaf was, well...

 

an eyeful.

Klenda Laughing at my Loaves Whilst Making Leaf Cookies

Wordless Wednesday: October Beauty

 

Knitting Knews

 I finally finished my most complicated knitting project yet: a lace knit shawl for Klenda!

It came from this free pattern, although I don't think it looks too similar, probably because I was supposed to use finer (thinner) yarn.  But I had this yarn, and it's such a perfect color for her!

I love the way it came out: pretty but super cozy!

And the thicker, warmer shawl is just perfect for this time of year.

I think I started it at the beginning of summer, so it took about 4-5 months.  I've discovered I like to have one complicated project (like lace knitting) going for all the time I spend in waiting rooms, and one simple project going for when I'm watching a movie.

 

I'm deciding between a couple of other lace shawl patterns in a lighter yarn which I could presumably finish by spring.

I'm leaning towards this one.

 

In the meantime, for simple knitting over the last month or so I made Hogwarts house scarves for the Zoomlians.

I'm also working on what I hope will be a long "Where's Waldo" stocking cap....because... whimsy?  

Anyway, I really hope someone will want to wear it because I really want to knit it!

2 Ravenclaw, 2 Griffindor, 1 Hufflepuff, and 1 Not Into Harry Potter

Leaf Cookies

You can start out with any sugar cookie recipe you like.  We like this one, but we like to add a touch of maple flavor.

We colored the whole dough yellow, with a bit of brown since otherwise the lemony yellow didn't seem very autumnal.

Then we broke off a quarter of the dough into a bag and added some orange, broke off a third, colored the rest with red, than bagged half and colored the remainder a darker red.

 

We chilled the dough for a couple of hours, but since they were all in quart sized bags and flattened for fast chilling, we probably only needed an hour.

At any rate, we put random chunks of each color together on the board, then squished them together a bit before rolling them out.  I've seen it done without squishing and I thought a bit of swirling would make the leaves look more natural.

 

 

One of the surprise benefits was that the leaves looked different on each side!

We looked at each leaf and put our favorite side up.

These two are the same cookie.

They all ended up being super pretty!

Here they are about to go into the oven.

 

 

And here is the finished leaf pile!

Poem of the Week: A Barred Owl

 

A Barred Owl

By Richard Wilbur

The warping night air having brought the boom

Of an owl’s voice into her darkened room,

We tell the wakened child that all she heard

Was an odd question from a forest bird,

Asking of us, if rightly listened to,

“Who cooks for you?” and then “Who cooks for you?”

Words, which can make our terrors bravely clear,

Can also thus domesticate a fear,

And send a small child back to sleep at night

Not listening for the sound of stealthy flight

Or dreaming of some small thing in a claw

Borne up to some dark branch and eaten raw.

HT: Poetry Foundation 

Image HT: All About Birds

Poem of the Week: The Beautiful Changes

 

The Beautiful Changes

By Richard Wilbur

One wading a Fall meadow finds on all sides   

The Queen Anne’s Lace lying like lilies

On water; it glides

So from the walker, it turns

Dry grass to a lake, as the slightest shade of you   

Valleys my mind in fabulous blue Lucernes.

The beautiful changes as a forest is changed   

By a chameleon’s tuning his skin to it;   

As a mantis, arranged

On a green leaf, grows

Into it, makes the leaf leafier, and proves   

Any greenness is deeper than anyone knows.

Your hands hold roses always in a way that says   

They are not only yours; the beautiful changes   

In such kind ways,   

Wishing ever to sunder

Things and things’ selves for a second finding, to lose   

For a moment all that it touches back to wonder.

 HT: Poetry Foundation

Image HT: Macro Magnificent

 

Wordless Wednesday: Early Autumn Hike