My mind, it is blown.

Heather of Sprinkle Bakes has applied her fine arts background to dessert-making, and the results are spectacular. She’s a fan of Tim Burton’s animation, so this year she made a Corpse Bride cake for Halloween. She’s also been kind enough to provide a highly-detailed tutorial, and she breaks the steps down so well that the project almost seems do-able by mere mortals. I love all of the little details, such as the cake interior matching the color of the bride’s hair.

She’s got loads of other tutorials as well; last year she did a Frankenweenie cake (with a bright-green interior), and there are several which are technically not supposed to be spooky but could easily be adapted. Her Matcha-Almond Layer Cake with Meringue Mushrooms, for instance, is a bilious green which evokes a mossy graveyard overgrown with toadstools.

Even if you aren’t interested in making a cake, the same instructions could be used for sculpting the Corpse Bride and Sparky from polymer clay. The Bride’s head would make a cute brooch.

She also has a book of her recipes available, which would be a great gift for an artistic baker.

(via When Geeks Wed)

You know what I love about running this blog? People occasionally send me pictures of apple tarts shaped like hacked-off arms and it’s perfectly normal.

I’ve mentioned creepy-food blog Kitchen Overlord previously, and intrepid blogger Chris-Rachael recently sent me a note:

I wanted to give you a heads up that I’m working on a Walking Dead cookbook. For the month of October, I’m releasing some extra gore-tastic recipes I think your readers would get a kick out of. For example:

Bloody Banana Guts

Brain Frittata

I’ve attached a sneak preview of my upcoming recipe for a sangria soaked apple tart shaped like Merle Dixon’s arm, post hacksaw. It even has a little flesh peeking from the gaping wrist.

I replied, “gack,” and she responded:

I’m kinda proud of this one:

Plucked Zombie Eye

It looks evil in a bloody red bowl of Thai curry. Evil and delicious.

Also, here’s the full step by step post for Merle Dixon’s Arm.

There’ll be a lot more of this disgusting awesomeness this month. I’m having way too much fun making my kitchen look like a crime scene.

So. If you’re looking to create a truly kickass zombie-based party menu, it looks like Kitchen Overlord is the place to be. Check it out!

Autumn is finally here in the Northern Hemisphere, and chilly evenings are custom-made for warming drinks. Here are a few that have been sitting around in my Drafts folder, just waiting for the proper time to emerge.

Caramel Apple
Serves 4

4 C apple cider (the non-alcoholic, apple-juice sort; thanks, Mim!)
1/4 C brown sugar
1 T cinnamon
1/2 C caramel vodka,* or more to taste

Put the cider, brown sugar, and cinnamon into a saucepan and bring to a simmer, stirring until sugar dissolves. Remove from heat, stir in vodka, and pour into mugs.

*You can find caramel-flavored vodka in many liquor stores, but it’s also easy to make your own. For either of these methods, you’ll need a 750ml bottle of vodka (the better the quality of the vodka, the better the final result, so don’t use paint-thinner-grade stuff):

• Pour out 1/2 C of vodka and replace with 1/2 C of caramel sauce. If you want to go the full homemade route, you can make your own sauce; otherwise, the store-bought stuff meant for ice cream topping is fine.
• Pour all of the vodka into another container temporarily, add 20 chopped-up caramel candies to the bottle, and pour as much vodka as will fit back in. Cap the bottle, set aside, and give it a good shake a couple of times a day for around 5 days (the smaller the caramel pieces, the faster it’ll infuse).

For either method, you can optionally strain the finished vodka through a coffee filter to remove any leftover small solids.

Candle in the Window
Serves 1

In a mug combine:

2 tsp. Bourbon
1 tsp. cherry brandy
1 tsp. dark Creme de Cacao
2 oz. light rum

Fill with coffee, top with whipped cream, and dust with cocoa powder.

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Flavorwire has a roundup of classic silent horror movies that are available online for free. Many of these were seminal influences for later works of horror, including the dreamlike The Cabinet of Dr. Caligari and the not-even-slightly-sparkly Nosferatu:

These would be great to play in the background at a Halloween party, particularly one with a vintage or movie theme.

One nice thing about maintaining a sprawling web presence for many years is that you’re always discovering stuff that you completely forgot about tucked away in odd corners. I just ran across some files from The Great Chocolate Frog Project of ‘Ought One and figured that somebody else might be able to get some use out of ’em.

One year when Shadaughter was young and very much a fan of Harry Potter, she requested a Hogwarts-themed Halloween party. Many of the party details are lost to the mists of time, but one thing we made was Chocolate Frog party favors.

We used a candy mold to make the frogs, and packaged them in clear plastic envelopes. (In the film the frogs come in intricate little hexagonal boxes; our party was held a month before the first movie was released, so we didn’t have any of the movie details for reference. If you’d like to make boxes instead, this papercraft pattern should work nicely.)

Included in each envelope was a trading card which featured a famous wizard, complete with biographical details. Some bios were reasonably historically accurate; a few I made for my own amusement. For instance:

Merlin

Merlin tutored the young King Arthur and helped chart the course of British history. His use of the Soopergloo charm enabled only Arthur to pull a sword from a stone, thus winning him the throne. After Arthur was defeated by Mordred, Merlin went into show business. He is best known for his smash-hit musicals “No, No, Nimue” and “A Hard Day’s Knight.”

(I thought seriously about making the second musical title “Singin’ in Igraine,” but figured that some parent out there might have a degree in Medieval English literature and get offended.)

There’s a PDF of a few of the cards here, and I also have a .zip file which includes a Word document with all of the cards plus the freeware fonts used in their creation. Download, edit, and print as desired.

Bonus: Here are a couple of other random items I found in the same folder.

Halloween Countdown Clock – Javascript which counts down to Halloween and then automatically resets itself for next year. View the page source to grab the code and install it on your own page.

Random Haunt Name Generator – This is a Perl script I wrote ages ago to help members of my Halloween listserv come up with names for their haunts. “Grimgibber’s Parlor of Dread” and “Pageant of Maniacs” and “Doctor Cadaver’s Pit of Malice” and other silliness.

Quite a number of authors blog and/or use Twitter, and long ago I put together a list of SF authors’ blogs and Twitter feeds. Because I am rather slow on the uptake, it only recently occurred to me that it might be a good idea to do the same for the fantasy/horror genre. Duh.

Anyway, for your following enjoyment, here are some blogs and feeds to, um, follow. (Note that lots more authors have an “official site” or some other minimal web presence; this list only includes those with actual blogs.)

It’s a pretty long list, so I’ve put it below the fold. If I’ve missed any of your favorites, let me know in the comments!

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A relatively new thing to worry about upon dying is what happens to your digital self. Not only do many of us have friends and family that we keep in contact with through social media, as more businesses and services migrate online it’s important to allow someone to “inherit” our passwords (if for no other reason than to erase our browsing history).

A number of interesting websites and applications have sprung up to meet this need; when triggered, they send email, post messages to your Twitter feed, or otherwise carry out your post-life instructions. Many are self-triggering, using the equivalent of a “dead man’s switch:” If you don’t periodically log in and reset them, they’ll activate after a set amount of time has elapsed. A few of the more elaborate ones require the input of one or more associates to whom you’ve provided specific passwords. Here’s a look at a few of these services:

Social Media

ifidie – This Facebook app allows you to create a video or a text message that will be published after you die

DeadSoci.al – Allows you to create a series of messages that are published to your “social networks” after your death; I’m a little fuzzy on how many social networks they cover, since only Facebook and Twitter seem to be prominent on the site.

_LIVESON – Promoted as “your social afterlife,” this service uses a program which analyzes your Twitter feed and learns your likes, tastes, and syntax. It begins tweeting on an auxiliary feed and you can train it to more accurately mimic “you.” Once you die, it’ll keep tweeting in your stead.

Assets

Cirrus Legacy – Central hub that keeps track of your email accounts, online banking, PayPal, eBay, Amazon, web hosting, etc. and allows you to specify what happens to them upon your death.

AssetLock – Electronic “safe deposit box” which allows you to upload files and save passwords and instructions to be released to predetermined individuals.

LifeEnsured – Online storage for files and passwords. Provides “digital estate planning” and allows you to specify what happens to your online accounts.

Email

Death Switch and Dead Man’s Switch – Both services send out email automatically after they stop hearing from you for a predetermined period. Both offer upgrades to add more recipients.

Ghost Memo – Also sends email to designated recipients, but takes a more active approach in that it periodically sends you email; if you don’t respond after a preset period, it triggers.

EmailFromDeath – Sends email but also offers the option of mailing a physical letter.

FutureMe – This is slightly different from the others in that it allows you to schedule an email to be sent at some future date, whether you’re dead or not. You can send an email to yourself several years from now. Some people choose to make their messages public, and reading through them is interesting.

Memorial

Great Goodbye – Create an online memorial and pre-set emails which can include photos, video, and audio recordings.

Bcelebrated – Create an “autobiographical legacy website,” write password-protected private messages, and send emails.

Virtual Eternity – Service which allows you to create an interactive avatar and train it to accurately reflect your appearance, voice, personality, and “life experiences” in order to stand in for you posthumously. This one’s sort of science fictiony-y and creepy.

In the last decade of the 19th Century, a police reporter named Jacob Riis set out to make people in New York’s upper- and middle class aware of the squalor of their city’s slums. The result was How the Other Half Lives: Studies Among the Tenements of New York, and it’s considered to be a landmark of social reform.

The book was filled with photos, sketches, and graphic descriptions of the wretched daily lives of the poverty-stricken. And, wonderfully, it did what it was intended to do: The public was galvanized by Riis’ muckraking and there were sweeping reforms which helped to improve the lives of the poor.

It’s a fascinating glimpse at the underbelly of New York at the turn of the last century, and it’s in the public domain so it’s readily available from a variety of sources. Authentic History has the book’s full text, plus a handy image index. There’s an audio version free at LibriVox. Museum Syndicate has a gallery of Riis’ photos. And there are several hardback and e-book versions available, many with endnotes and other expanded material. Really interesting stuff.

(via BoingBoing)

Cook and metal enthusiast Brian Manowitz has combined his interests into what is probably quite accurately described as “a vegan cooking show like no other,” in that he does the show dressed in full costume and features custom heavy metal tracks (downloadable for free).

The Vegan Black Metal Chef Project has 2 main purposes.
1) Help answer the question “what do vegans eat”/show vegan cooking in the most informative and fun way possible while making some great music to go along with it.
2) Help people bring consciousness to their lives and actions.

He’s done a number of interviews which expand on his philosophy further. All of his videos are available on his YouTube channel, and a DVD of the first season is also available for purchase.

(via Laughing Squid)

In 2012 Jon Underwood founded a not-for-profit social enterprise called Impermanence, out of a belief “that if we were more sorted about death, the world would be a much, much better place.” The organization currently has three active projects: Dying Matters, a resource site for people who expect to die within the year; Funeral Advisor, aimed at helping the consumer make informed choices about the funeral industry; and, particularly intriguing for we memento mori types, Death Cafe, gatherings where “people come together in a relaxed and safe setting to discuss death, drink tea and eat delicious cake.” Sign me up.

The stated objective of Death Cafe is “To increase awareness of death with a view to helping people make the most of their (finite) lives.” The Cafe isn’t a fixed location, but rather a moveable feast; Underwood has hosted several, but has also established the gatherings as a social franchise and encourages others to host their own. He and his colleagues have put together a free guide to holding a Death Cafe, with the main points being:

• On a not for profit basis, though to be sustainable we try to cover expenses through donations and fundraising
• In an accessible, respectful and confidential space, free of discrimination, where people can express their views safely
• With no intention of leading participants towards any particular conclusion, product or course of action
• Alongside refreshing drinks and nourishing food – and cake!

If you agree to these principles, you can have your gathering listed on the site’s schedule of upcoming events. (And, obviously, if you don’t want to hold your own meeting you can check the schedule to look for Death Cafes in your area.)

This sounds like a really interesting, convivial way to discuss a subject that many people find uncomfortable. Even if you don’t want to hew to their exact format, a tea party with death as the primary subject matter would be fascinating; subject matter could range from historical funeral customs to the meaning of symbols on gravestones.