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Halloween Recipes: Part 2, Savory Snacks
by Guest Writer, Valerie Whitmore[this is a repost from October 2012]
Jump to: Part 1 | Part 2 | Part 3 | Part 4 | Part 5
When you're dealing with themed recipes like Halloween food it's sometimes hard to find recipes that a) you are pretty sure are going to taste good, and b) actually turn out to look like they are described. Some of the recipes just sounded like they were meant to look gross, not festive. I wanted food we were going to want to eat.
One recipe that we didn't get to while our taste-testers were here were the Jack 'O Lantern Quesadillas. I had to make them the next day instead but Brent was a very willing guinea pig
The pumpkin filling was sweet and spicy. The chipotle chili powder gave it nice heat. Unless you have an aversion to spicy I wouldn't omit it.
The directions say to optionally use a sharp knife to cut the jack-o-lantern face out from the prepared quesadilla. Now, I just couldn't figure out how this would work without making a mess so I improvised a little. I cut out the face ahead of time. I then put the cut out tortilla into the pan and let it brown. Meanwhile I topped the uncut tortilla in reverse order from what the directions stated so I could have the orange-ish filling showing through once the cut tortilla was placed on top. When the cut tortilla was browned a bit I placed it on top of the filling on the other tortilla. Put the quesadilla into the pan, uncut side down, and let it cook until the cheese (which is on the bottom) started to get melty. More work this way but it ensured that I had a cute quesadilla in the end.
And the finished product:
The recipe the taste-testers DID get to sample was also a tasty one (in addition to the cuteness factor). The recipe called for refrigerated pie dough as the tart crust to be rolled out and cut into shapes with cookie cutters. I used three different shapes and sizes. You could also just use a biscuit cutter or other cookie cutter to make more generic shapes.
The filling (ground turkey, onion, garlic and seasonings) is placed on half of the cutouts and topped with cheese and diced tomato.
The bat shape was the one I wanted the most but as you can see, they were hard to get much filling in and still have enough dough to seal. The ghosts could hold more filling and sealed up much easier. One trick I figured out halfway through was to further roll out the top dough pieces so they were slightly larger than the bottom ones (since the dough had to stretch out over the filling.
You can then "paint" them with a colored egg yolk wash (I wanted to do black bats, hence my insistence on using the bat cutters) before baking.
One nice thing about these is that you can assemble them ahead of time (without the egg wash) and flash freeze them on a cookie sheet. Then just store them in a freezer bag until you are ready to bake them (reduce the heat by 25 degrees F and extend the cooking time).
While I liked these, I thought they tasted too much like pie dough. But I'm not a fan of pie dough, so that's probably just me. The taste-testers seemed to really like them so I'm going with 5 stars anyway.
Jump to: Part 1 | Part 2 | Part 3 | Part 4 | Part 5
When you're dealing with themed recipes like Halloween food it's sometimes hard to find recipes that a) you are pretty sure are going to taste good, and b) actually turn out to look like they are described. Some of the recipes just sounded like they were meant to look gross, not festive. I wanted food we were going to want to eat.
One recipe that we didn't get to while our taste-testers were here were the Jack 'O Lantern Quesadillas. I had to make them the next day instead but Brent was a very willing guinea pig
The pumpkin filling was sweet and spicy. The chipotle chili powder gave it nice heat. Unless you have an aversion to spicy I wouldn't omit it.
The directions say to optionally use a sharp knife to cut the jack-o-lantern face out from the prepared quesadilla. Now, I just couldn't figure out how this would work without making a mess so I improvised a little. I cut out the face ahead of time. I then put the cut out tortilla into the pan and let it brown. Meanwhile I topped the uncut tortilla in reverse order from what the directions stated so I could have the orange-ish filling showing through once the cut tortilla was placed on top. When the cut tortilla was browned a bit I placed it on top of the filling on the other tortilla. Put the quesadilla into the pan, uncut side down, and let it cook until the cheese (which is on the bottom) started to get melty. More work this way but it ensured that I had a cute quesadilla in the end.
And the finished product:
The recipe the taste-testers DID get to sample was also a tasty one (in addition to the cuteness factor). The recipe called for refrigerated pie dough as the tart crust to be rolled out and cut into shapes with cookie cutters. I used three different shapes and sizes. You could also just use a biscuit cutter or other cookie cutter to make more generic shapes.
The filling (ground turkey, onion, garlic and seasonings) is placed on half of the cutouts and topped with cheese and diced tomato.
The bat shape was the one I wanted the most but as you can see, they were hard to get much filling in and still have enough dough to seal. The ghosts could hold more filling and sealed up much easier. One trick I figured out halfway through was to further roll out the top dough pieces so they were slightly larger than the bottom ones (since the dough had to stretch out over the filling.
You can then "paint" them with a colored egg yolk wash (I wanted to do black bats, hence my insistence on using the bat cutters) before baking.
One nice thing about these is that you can assemble them ahead of time (without the egg wash) and flash freeze them on a cookie sheet. Then just store them in a freezer bag until you are ready to bake them (reduce the heat by 25 degrees F and extend the cooking time).
While I liked these, I thought they tasted too much like pie dough. But I'm not a fan of pie dough, so that's probably just me. The taste-testers seemed to really like them so I'm going with 5 stars anyway.
Jack 'O Lantern Quesadillas with Chipotle-Maple Pumpkin and Black Beans
by Amy Powell | photo by cdkitchen
by Amy Powell | photo by cdkitchen