Hell Pizza in New Zealand has a reputation for being somewhat…irreverent…in their advertising. Last spring they had a promotion for “Hell Cross Buns,” with the image at left, as part of their Easter campaign.
It struck me at the time that the cute little pentacle buns would be fun to do at home, but since my first effort didn’t turn out properly (because I am stupid; see below), and I haven’t gotten around to a second attempt, and I’m really sick of looking at this thing in my drafts folder, I’m just going to toss it out here and let you guys run with it.
My problem was with the pentacle. From a quick glance at the ad photo, I assumed that the design was slashed into the top of the risen dough with a bread lame. However, hot cross bun dough doesn’t score cleanly, and the results could euphemistically be called “lopsided.”
Now that I’m looking at the picture again, though, I’m thinking that the design was just drawn on with flour paste, which is how the cross on traditional buns are made. Way to outsmart myself.
Anyway, hot cross buns are a good introduction to bread-baking because the dough is easy to handle and is pretty forgiving (if you don’t like the recipe linked above, The Google has plenty more). The pentacles can be drawn on with flour paste before baking or with icing after they cool.
If you like the idea of an incised design, try using a dough that slashes more cleanly (such as sourdough) and make one large loaf instead of messing around with a zillion little buns.
Either way, these would be a fun addition to a Halloween party spread, or just to slip in the breadbasket to mess with the in-laws.
The H.P. Lovefest – Defective Yeti is posting Lovecraftian tidbits throughout the month of October.
Eye Popping – Tutorial for making ridiculously cute eyeball cake pops, plus a version decorated with teensy spiders.
Felt Halloween Ornaments – Free patterns for three simple and squee-worthy felt ornaments. These would look cute on a “Halloween tree,” or made into a baby’s mobile. You could also enlarge the patterns and make trick-or-treat bags.
Hide – Low-res, simple game that somehow manages to be pretty creepy.
Femme Fatales – Sleek art deco-ish series of famous monsters depicted as flappers.
Welcome Home Inigo – Blogger Aunt Peaches commissioned a rather splendid Inigo-Montoya-on-black-velvet portrait from Bruce White of Velvet Geek. Because what isn’t improved by Inigo Montoya on black velvet? Nothing, that’s what.
Three from Hostess with the Mostess: Deathly Hallows Dinner Party – Spectacular dinner party idea with lots of detailed photos. All Hallows Eve Dinner – Creepily elegant dinner party theme. I especially love the candy-filled apothecary jars. Spellbound Sweets – Lots of printable labels, plus some lovely decorating ideas: Part 1, Part 2, Part 3.
Marshmallows are one of those candies that seem like they’d be much harder to make than they really are. Chocolate-dipping anything increases its Fanciness Quotient exponentially. Therefore, chocolate-dipped homemade marshmallows belong to that splendid pantheon of projects that look like they took much more time and effort than they actually did. My favorite!
Even better, all you have to do is drop in a little food coloring and they’re suddenly all gussied up for Halloween.
Ingredients
2 T plus 2-1/2 tsp unflavored gelatin (about 3-1/2 envelopes)
1 C cold water, divided
2 C granulated sugar
1/2 C light corn syrup
1/4 tsp salt
2 large egg whites*
1 Tbsp pure vanilla extract or about 2 tsp flavored extract such as mint, orange, etc. (choose something that pairs well with chocolate)
Paste (preferable) or gel food coloring. (Using liquid coloring for anything but the lightest tint will add too much liquid to the mixture and the marshmallows won’t be as poofy.) I used orange, but green, red, or black are other possibilities.
8 oz semisweet or bittersweet chocolate
Edible decorations: Candy corn, chopped nuts, crushed butterscotch candies, shredded coconut (shake with a little food coloring to tint), cake sprinkles, etc.
*The original recipe at Gourmet suggests using reconstituted powdered whites if you’re really concerned about food safety, but I think the whites are heated enough by the sugar syrup that this probably isn’t necessary.
For decades people have lived with the works of H.P. Lovecraft on their shelves, his fantastic and terrifying creations tucked safely between the covers of his books.
When I asked Shadowboy the annual question, “What do you want to be for Halloween this year?” and he answered confidently, “Cthulhu,” it may not have been my single proudest moment as a parent but it certainly made the list.
Fortunately I usually ask the annual question somewhere around February, so I had plenty of time to plan.
I also made a costume for Empress Pam’s niece again this year; it was a bit of a rush job by my standards (since we didn’t know she was lacking a costume until rather late in the game), but fortunately she wanted to be a dog, and compared to Cthulhu a dalmatian is a snap.
Both costumes were made from a basic “animal” costume pattern, and the only change I made for the dog costume was to lengthen the ears.
The Cthulhu version got reptilian feet cribbed from a dragon pattern,* webbed fingers (created by stitching channels in the costume “mittens”), and claws cut from vinyl. The tentacles were just conical tubes sewn from two contrasting fabrics that were stuffed lightly with fiberfill and attached to a thin strip of fabric sewn across the middle of the hood (I used the orange contrast to add a little detail to the head and hands too). I toyed briefly with using thin wire inside the tentacles to twist them into various positions but decided that they were too short to position effectively; it might be a possibility for an adult version of the costume.
The wings were inexpensive vinyl “demon wings” that were spray-painted with plastic-fusion paint to match the costume colors. The harness for the wings just had straps around the shoulders and didn’t anchor them effectively, so I added another strap around the chest. I made slits in the back of the costume so that the wings could be rolled up and passed through from the inside, hiding the harness.
As is traditional, the annual Halloween portrait will be added to my Big Wall o’Costumes. This one will go in a thematically-appropriate frame made of resin with lots of twisty bits.
And now it’s time to start thinking about next year’s costumes….
*I have a habit of buying likely-looking patterns whenever the local fabric stores have 99-cent sales, even if I don’t have an immediate use for them. I’ve generally found that hacking together pieces of different commercial patterns is easier than calculating measurements and drawing pieces from scratch.
I’d like to shake the hands of the marketing team who convinced a mainstream hardware chain to launch a major promotion around zombies.
Westlake Ace Hardware has an extremely elaborate campaign, both in-store and online, touting their products to zombies and humans alike. Their Zombie Preparedness Center lets humans browse through items for zombie defense and zombie-proofing the home, plus products for removing carpet stains and patching walls. Zombies can choose tools for bodily repairs (caulk, duct tape) and items for home and lifestyle (“Just because you’re rotting doesn’t mean your home has to smell like it”).
The sidebars in both sections are full of help content like, “Since I became a zombie, flying insects continue to swarm around me. Do you have anything that can clear an outside area of flying insects?” and “What types of locks are best for keeping zombies from entering my home?”
There’s also a social media component, with the company’s Facebook page offering tools to “zombie-proof” your page and Twitter feed reminding users to be mindful of the undead.
The zombies also have a platform. They initially staged a protest over Westlake’s one-sided zombie defense advertising:
Once Westlake relented and started offering zombie-friendly merchandise, the zombies followed up with a Website, Facebook page and Twitter feed (spokeszombie: Ricky Braneberger) aimed at promoting cross-cultural understanding between the living and the undead.
Halloween Crafts – A few easy craft ideas. I like the simple “spiderweb” doily project.
Pumpkin Smuggler – Where was this maternity shirt when I was pregnant?!?
Night at Karloff’s – Amusing “Nighthawks” riff, available as prints. I rather like the artist’s Dagger, too.
Don’t Forget to Eat Your Spiders – I’m somewhat torn about this; on the one hand, the plastic spiders embedded in this Jello mold look uh-ma-zing, but on the other hand I’m not sure how I feel about sticking inedible objects in food. (Update: An intrepid reader suggests gummi spiders as a subsitute. That oughta work.)
Chet Zar – Artist whose tagline is, “I like to paint monsters.” Yes, yes he does.
Friendship is Magic – A short My Little Pony Flash game. As Rob over at BoingBoing put it, “At a certain point, I concluded that it is an unofficial My Little Pony flash game.”
The 13 Greatest Ghosts of Geekdom – A geeky roundup at Topless Robot, which gets bonus points for making me think of the Funky Phantom for the first time in about 30 years.
Women Fighters in Reasonable Armor – Single-serving site dedicated to just what it says on the tin: Female warriors who will neither be hacked to pieces nor frozen to death due to lack of appropriate attire.
I’ve been sort of peripherally aware of the idea of making “witch hats” by sticking a chocolate kiss on top of a chocolate-covered cookie, but I hadn’t given them much thought until the fantabulous Jessica sent me this photo of cookies with teensy icing buckles. That upped the Cuteness Factor by about 1000%, so I decided to monkey with the concept a little further.
You will need:
Cookies with at least one flat, chocolate-covered side; I used Keebler “Fudge Stripes” turned upside-down.
Chocolate kisses; I used plain Hershey’s kisses, but the striped “Hugs” would also be cute.
Frosting. You can make this from scratch, but that kind of defeats the whole “easy, no-bake” thing. Individual decorating tubes can be expensive; I just used white canned cake frosting and colored it with some gel food coloring I had on hand.
M&Ms or other little round chocolate candies, if you want to add spiders.
To make the hats, pipe a little frosting in the center of each cookie (if the cookie has a hole in the center, pipe around the hole). Stick a kiss in the middle; I like to use enough frosting that a little bit gooshes out around the edges to make a “hat band.” In its simplest form, you are now done.
If you want to get fancier, pipe two thin oval-ish shapes on the kiss and two lines on the hat to make a decorative bow. I found that the frosting tended to warm up after a while, making it thinner and harder to control, so I periodically stuck the piping bag in the freezer for a few minutes to firm it back up.
For extra decoration, add a spider by sticking an M&M to the hat brim with a little frosting and then piping on legs. Here’s where a very thin round tip would come in handy; I didn’t have one on hand, and just snipping the end off a disposable icing bag resulted in–depending on the size of the hole–legs that were either a bit too big or a bit too thin and ribbony for my taste. (Fortunately, even the mistakes taste just fine.)
These are super-easy to make, so they’re not only a quick and attractive addition to a Halloween party, they’re a great project for kids.
Guys, read the fine print before selling your soul to the devil. There’s no way to opt out of his email newsletters.
— badbanana
Probably 98% of human history would have never happened if showing off for girls wasn’t a thing.
— shawnries
Blood is definitely thicker than water. This Kool-Aid is disgusting.
— _TomBrady
Wong is looking for the 12 coins of Confucius. Legend say he who bring all coins together have great power. Legends are always saying things like that. No legend ever says “Man who reunites the coins of Buddha will have the power to make songbirds feel as though they have just eaten.” It’s always power over the world.
— 100 Mysteries
My grandpa’s deaf. Phone calls are 20 minutes of me screaming, “I’m fine!” The neighbors must think I’m a black lab short of a Berkowitz.
— AinsleyofAttack
I think a fun way to either make or break a friendship is to show up with a horse costume built for two.
— SheBanggs
My son thought he was finally going through puberty. But nope. Werewolf.
— shariv67
You guys! Big news…let’s just say I’m eating for two now (Myself and the dead Victorian ghost girl who lives inside the wall).
— gordonshumway
Truth be told, I sort of wanted Carol Ann, in the movie Poltergeist, to tell her parents, “Up yours!” and refuse to go into the light.
— MistookMistake
When Harry was 17 he defeated the most powerful dark wizard of all time. When Luke was 17 he was farming moisture. #perspective
— SithSarcasm
Last October, Neil Gaiman posted a suggestion that everyone inaugurate the tradition of giving scary books to one another on Halloween.
I propose that, on Hallowe’en or during the week of Hallowe’en, we give each other scary books. Give children scary books they’ll like and can handle. Give adults scary books they’ll enjoy.
I propose that stories by authors like John Bellairs and Stephen King and Arthur Machen and Ramsey Campbell and M R James and Lisa Tuttle and Peter Straub and Daphne Du Maurier and Clive Barker and a hundred hundred others change hands — new books or old or second-hand, beloved books or unknown. Give someone a scary book for Hallowe’en. Make their flesh creep…
It was an idea that quickly gained steam, with fans enthusiastically gifting books to each other, and it also spawned a Website with an amusing FAQ and a nice list of book recommendations.
Now it’s time to gear up for the second year (which will actually make it a tradition instead of, “that good idea somebody had that one year”). Think about gifting a book to a friend, or hand one to the clerk at your favorite coffee shop. Arrange a book-swap party, where everyone arrives with a favorite spooky book and leaves with a different one. Read from a book of spooky stories at a child’s Halloween party and send the guests home with copies.
To my unending dismay, I live in a location which never ever gets trick-or-treaters, or else I’d also keep a small selection of books on hand to give as treats. Not to everyone, mind you…just to the kids proudly wearing their homemade Halloween costumes, or the ones who greet me with monster roars, or anyone else, regardless of age, who makes it clear that they know Halloween is about more than free candy.
Bonus: Here’s Neil Gaiman himself explaining the concept behind the tradition.
Hell Pizza in New Zealand has a reputation for being somewhat…irreverent…in their advertising. Last spring they had a promotion for “Hell Cross Buns,” with the image at left, as part of their Easter campaign.
I’d like to shake the hands of the marketing team who convinced a mainstream hardware chain to launch a major promotion around zombies.
I’ve been sort of peripherally aware of the idea of making “witch hats” by sticking a chocolate kiss on top of a chocolate-covered cookie, but I hadn’t given them much thought until the fantabulous Jessica sent me 
