Halloween Baking 2022

Since I’m already amassing pictures that will undoubtedly be used in a year’s time, I best catch up on the rest of the ones that have in turn had their year-long incubation period. There’s a lot of little things, so I’ll mash them all here and hope for the best. You might not want to do the same.

First up is the Scaredy Cat Cookie Kit. My spellchecker doesn’t think ‘scaredy’ is a real word, but the packaging begs to differ. I’ve not had the best luck with cookie kits in the past, but this appeared to have far fewer pieces to the puzzle. Fate spurned me again, however, when I opened the box and fragments poured out. Maybe not ‘poured’ per se, but several ended up on the table before I fully unboxed the contents.

Making matters worse, the pieces that were still intact were stuck together, forcing me to apply a dangerous amount of pressure to separate them. I did manage to get them apart without further carnage, but it was a fool’s errand as the legs were all but missing.

I had no hope of getting this thing to stand up, but I didn’t want to just toss it in the trash. Instead, I decorated each piece individually to the best of my ability. It’s been a while, but I recall the icing bag breaking or something, so it wouldn’t come out cleanly. What we see here is a mess of frosting with random gumdrops and other decorations. I still tossed it in the trash, but only after it became a landmine on my counter for weeks. Let’s just ignore this and move on.

While this so-called article is a collection of odds & ends, they were all apparently from Target’s Hyde & Eek lineup. So we have some sort of cohesion in the end, I guess.

The Walking Dyed is probably best of the kits. It performs the holy trio of providing all of the required materials, a clever title, and—most importantly—it ends up looking more or less like the box art.

You begin by mixing the dough as you would for a standard sugar cookie, but then divide the mass into three portions before adding a special dry food dye. After kneading the lumps into a consistent consistency—a process that will leave your hands looking sickly and gangrenous—they are cut into pieces and smashed into the final cookie form.

I have to admit. I’ve love to just eat these multi-color lumps as-is. It’s probably not safe due to the raw eggs or something, but that could just be a conspiracy theory to keep me from living my life.

There’s a two-step process in which you cook them for a certain amount of time, then add the googly eyes before finishing the baking. The best part about this is the fact that there’s no wrong way to go about this. They’re monsters or zombies or something, so just place them haphazardly wherever you wish. Even ones that split in half somehow are fair game.

I was worried that after baking, the cookies wouldn’t look the same. All too often colored dough ends up turning into a burnt brown that completely masks the original shade. But not here, due in no small part to some sort of black magic and witchery. Does that make it safe to eat? Only one way to find out.

Witch’s Brew Slime Kit. I was initially excited about this. It promised a bubbling concoction of edible and neon green slime. To boot, it came with its own cauldron to mix and serve it. Ingredients were merciful few, but that also meant that you needed to source out the liquid portions. I suppose that makes sense, but I paid quite a bit for a back of sugar and gelatin.

This is also the point where I realized that there’s a difference between tonic water and seltzer. Tonic apparently is sweetened and hence very heavily calorie-laden. I’ve never been a fan since the days of my youth when I tried to make home-made orange soda with this and actual orange juice. It was nothing like Crush!

Pour the tonic into the bowl and slowly stir the mixture in. A simple task for sure, but not when you’re holding a blacklight for effect as well as a phone to capture an animated GIF. I’m not sure why I thought the blacklight would help, as it certainly looks neon enough without it.

The end result was a sticky mess that I couldn’t stomache. It’s akin to the times you attempt to make Jell-O, and it just never congeals. Do you still eat it in that state? I think not.

It’s for a church, honey. Next…

I also had high hopes for this. Meringues are a unique treat that differ from the likes of most cookies and brownies. They’re also not too unhealthy due to the fact that they’re 105% air while still having a sweet taste.

I royally messed up the piping process by not getting the goo into the very bottom. I think you were supposed to invert the bag over a glass and slowly flip it inside-out, but it still ended up all at the top. Trying to work it down to the end just didn’t work, and once it started to leak out the top where my hand was, it was all over.

But I did get some semblance of ‘ghosts’ onto the tray. By the time I had these examples, the remainder had coated my hand and make it look like I had punched a patient on Dr. Pimple Popper, but it was done.

Into the oven they went and baked on an oddly low temperature for an oddly long amount of time, giving it every right to exist in my Kindergarten Cookbook from 1986.

Were they good? Yes, despite the terrible job at holding a basic shape and having recognizable facial features. I placed one into the Witch’s Brew and regretted that decision immediately. The remainder sat around until they were either eaten or were ground into grout that now forms a permanent crust between my kitchen counter tiles.

And just for fun, I’ve created an overly offensive matching game where you can line up the end results to descriptions that would get me canceled if it weren’t for the fact that Neocities is wholly absent from any sort of moderation of the sites here. Not that I’m complaining.