Hi! I'm Farrah, and I enjoy looking at Pinterest. I like to believe I can re-create any recipe perfectly, but that's a big fat lie. I'm a completely average cook, but I enjoy a good theme. And with Halloween coming up, Pinterest has ZILLIONS of ideas.
This year, Pinterest sent me over their data for their top-pinned Halloween recipes. I'm no Pinterest Queen, but I decided to try five of them out and rate them based on difficulty, taste, and creativity.
I chose five recipes that allow the average person to purchase ingredients from a typical grocery store, with the exception that I had to buy one skull pan and one skull mold from Amazon. (They came in two days with Prime.) Then, I got to work!!! Here's which ones were successes and which ones I absolutely failed at.
I was actually surprised to see that one of the top-pinned Halloween recipes was this Tasty idea. Overall, it wasn't difficult to pull together!
The most time-consuming thing was carving the pumpkin, which didn't end up fitting my smallest bowl. So, my guy Jack had to wear the queso like a hat. The second reason I docked points was because the queso was kinda stringy, which is just plain offensive.
The guac was A+, and I highly recommend making it fresh instead of store-bought. If you're incredibly lazy, you could buy jarred queso (vegan queso, anyone?!) or salsa to put on top of the pumpkin in a bowl and the final result would be just as cute.
Overall, I'm pleased that this was such a success. You don't even have to have real pumpkin-carving skills since all you're doing is carving a mouth.
I moved on to the chocolate skull recipe next because I had a feeling they'd need to cool in the freezer, and I was right. I underestimated how difficult and messy this would be.
I tried really hard to be precise, and I still got chocolate EVERYWHERE. Also, no matter how hard I tried to follow directions, they just didn't come out of the mold looking like they were supposed to.
Half of the backs of the skulls were gone, which ended up being OK?! Only because they looked bashed in — but that also meant the brain cream cheese filling didn't stick how it was supposed to.
These tasted fine because it was literally just white chocolate, but the pieces are BIG. There's really no classy way to eat them. And also, they start to melt if you hold them for more than 10 seconds.
I'm sorry to say that this recipe was a fail, but I really think that unless you are a baking superstar, you can save yourself the effort and get store-bought skull-shaped candy.
After all the work I put into the white chocolate skulls, I was hoping this next shrunken potato head recipe would be easier. Luckily, it kind of was.
The most time-consuming part was carving little ghoul faces into the potatoes. I actually used a small carving knife from the pumpkin-carving kit I had, so I don't know how a longer knife would work out. I feel like it would be harder?
These turned out...pretty good?! The faces came together pretty ghoulishly when they were done cooking.
If you're lazy, I recommend just using ketchup as a dipping sauce, but the green "slime" was actually pretty tasty.
I think these would be a great addition to a Halloween-themed party and had an extra detail that I never knew potatoes needed. Plus, it's all pretty simple to throw together!
I was really excited to get started on this next mummy pizza pie recipe because it looked really fun and cute. Plus, who doesn't love pizza bites? I don't trust you if you raised your hand.
Because I'm just your average cook, I don't own cookie cutters, which you need for this recipe. So I used a wineglass to make perfect circles, and it worked just as well (I assume). The only real time-consuming thing was layering the mummy dough wraps on every piece. It took me about 25 minutes for that important detail, and I only made 12.
I'm sitting here laughing at my end result because my mummies literally look like cross-eyed muppets!!! I found googly-eye candy at the store because they didn't have a food marker (which the recipe called for) and I was trying to limit the specialty items I had to get. But even if I'd had a food marker, I think my mummy wraps look a little bloated — it's hard to really tell what they are.
I'm sad to say that it's mostly my fault that this was a fail. I think someone with a little more patience could do this better than I could, but at the end of the day it's honestly just easier to serve bagel bites if you're having a party.
I was really looking forward to recreating my last pin, which was this cute stuffed burrito skull recipe. I've never made any sort of tortilla/bread from scratch before, so that was the only thing that made me nervous about attempting this.
As you can see from the photo above, the outside came out beautifully. It looks like a scary little skull. I think I maybe used too much dough because the end result was too bready? The stuffing-to-filling ratio was off. It WAS really good, though, so it gets points for that.
This wasn't terribly hard, but there were a lot of steps. Also, you have to make sure you're preparing the dough 100% correctly. It gets docked points for taste, but only because I went heavy on the dough.
Overall, this recipe was great! I was bound to not re-create it perfectly because I'm not a chef, but it's an easy way to add a bit of fun detail to your Halloween party.
