Second-Annual Pumpkin Carving

Last night was the second-annual pumpkin carving at our house. We had a couple of friends over, carved our Halloween Jack-O-Lanterns, and of course talked and ate way too much food. We also opened the first bottles of hard cider (the regular cider and the maple cider that we bottled in early October) to good reviews. I was glad to see that it was palatable and our hard work was not put to waste! (The picture on the left was my husband's work. I wish I could claim that level of skill!)

Anyway, we had a couple of cancellations at the last minute because of the autumn cold that was going around, so here was what we decided on for a menu. First, for drinks, we had apple cider - hard apple cider from our earlier bottling, and "soft" apple cider, heated on the stove top with cinnamon sticks.

I also made pepperoni pizza puffs (always a favorite), a modified stuffed mushrooms recipe (my husband's not a fan of too much spice, so I substitute the cayenne for seasoned salt and add just a teeny tiny dash of crushed red pepper flakes - one shake - so they're not too spicy), and then made holy-foodgasm caramel corn. No lie, this stuff is like crack.

Here's the recipe:

• 1 stick butter (unsalted)
• 2 cups golden/light brown sugar
• 1/2 cup corn syrup
• 1 tsp salt 
• 1/2 tsp baking soda
• 1 tsp vanilla 
• big bowl plain popped popcorn

1. Preheat oven to 250F. 
2. Pop the popcorn over the stove in a bit of canola oil. Place the popcorn in a large baking dish (a disposable turkey pan is best) and keep it warm in the oven until you're ready for it. 
3. Melt the butter on the stovetop over medium heat. Stir in the brown sugar and corn syrup. Bring to a boil, stirring constantly. Once it comes to a boil, let it boil for 4 minutes without touching it. 
4. Take off the heat and add the baking soda and vanilla. It'll turn a really cool light color and thicken up immediately - that's normal. 
5. Pour over the popcorn and stir so all the popcorn is coated. 
6. Bake for 45 min, stirring every 15 minutes. Let cool, break apart and serve. Pairs insanely well with (non-alcoholic) warm cider and cinnamon.

 Enjoy!

Halloween and Harry Potter Butterbeer

Halloween is right around the corner! While I'm not thrilled about the colder weather, I love this time of year. Starting with Halloween, we get into this festive, celebratory, holiday party mode that lasts up until New Years. I've shared a picture of our puggle Phoebe who we dressed as a "piggle" for the APF's Howl-o-ween event last weekend. Isn't she cute??? :)

Unfortunately, it looks like our party-plans may be on hold due to a nasty bug that's been going around. (I said "adult" originally here, and then realized that it sounded a little worse than a whole bunch of late 20- and 30-somethings getting dressed up and throwing a few back at a house party.)

However, we're still planning to hand out loads and loads of candy on Sunday, and we've planned a Harry Potter marathon that day -- mostly because the first installment of Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows is coming out, and I absolutely hate gory movies (think the Saw series), so wizarding movies seemed like a decent Halloween choice. Plus, we've seen the movies so many times that answering the doorbell won't be that big of a deal!

Anyway - to make it a little special, I started looking for recipes for Harry Potter's Butterbeer.

The first recipe for Butterbeer I found was on Shine, and it looked pretty good, consisting of ginger ale or club soda, butterscotch sauce, vanilla ice cream, and optionally rum. Sounds like a yummy version of a soda float! Still, I figured, let's see what other people have to say on the topic.

MuggleNet, the authoritative source on this type of thing, suggests using club or cream soda, butterscotch sauce, and real butter. Hmm... this sounds a little too buttery for my taste.

I found a similar news article that also suggested the addition of rum extract -- definitely a possibility.

And finally, I found a site that aggregated 10 different butterbeer recipes.

The most interesting ones I found on the site were Recipe #2, which called for an entire CUP of Butterscotch Schnapps and 7 cups of cream soda (Now, I've been known to make some pretty lethal punch, but that seems like a lot!)

Now, Recipe #4 calls for root beer OR cream soda, honey, and butter. Now, this is the first recipe that I've seen that actually calls for root beer (after all, it's butter BEER). That's promising.

However, Recipes #9 and #10 look the best.

Recipe #9 calls for vanilla ice cream, root beer, butterscotch syrup, and whipped cream with chopped nuts. It's basically a glorified root beer float, but yum!

Recipe #10 calls for vanilla ice cream, butter, brown sugar, spices, and sparkling apple cider, which just sounds yummy.

I think we're going to go with root beer, either Vanilla or Edy's butter pecan ice cream, and butterscotch sauce. Perhaps a little bit of dark rum for those of us who haven't come down with this horrible bug.

What are your plans for Halloween???