This wasn’t in my original recipe series, but I thought I’d better share it before Halloween! Will your neighbor be “booed”? Did you know that their doorbell will throw a treat at your door and leave a cute little poem about Halloween and how you got booed? And then you have to “boo” two people and hang a ghost on your door to let everyone know you’ve been booed? Well, I now live in a place known for this kind of 1950s family friendly fun, and I love it.If you want to get in on the boo action then you should check out this She gives 16 different versions of the blog. Obviously you know where I’m going because we were “booed” and I decided I needed to do something very Halloween-esque to deliver it. Usually I just focus on the taste and don’t make a lot of cute stuff, but at least my regular readers know that as cute as this one is, it tastes good too. These eyeballs are just the right amount of grotesque, and they’re packed with pumpkin goodness. Sure, you could serve them with Oreo truffles, cookie dough truffles, or gingerbread truffles, but you can’t go wrong with a Halloween pumpkin.
Hands-on time: 30 to 45 minutes
Ready: 3 hours
yield: about 2 to 3 dozen truffles
raw material
8 whole graham crackers
1 cup pumpkin puree
2 TB brown sugar
6 oz.cream cheese
1 teaspoon vanilla extract
1 teaspoon ground cinnamon
1/2 teaspoon minced ginger
1/4 teaspoon ground nutmeg
1/8 teaspoon ground cloves
2 cups white chocolate chips
24 blue, green and brown M&Ms
1 tube red writing icing
instruct
1. Put graham crackers in food processor and process until completely crushed. Add pumpkin puree, brown sugar, cream cheese, vanilla, cinnamon, ginger, nutmeg, and cloves. Process until smooth. Refrigerate for 2 hours, until the truffle dough is sticky and easy to form into balls.
2. Roll the dough into balls, about 2-3 dozen. Place the wax paper-lined tray in the freezer until ready to coat with chocolate.
3. Melt the chocolate chips in a microwave-safe bowl (see cooking lesson below).
4. Dip the pumpkin truffles into the melted white chocolate. Place an M&M on top of each truffle while it is still wet. Place on a wax paper-lined baking sheet to firm up.
5. Use red writing icing to draw lines on the eyeballs, about 5 lines per truffle.
Melting chocolate is super easy, but if done wrong, the results can be terrible. Burnt chocolate is not good. When melting chocolate in the microwave, only heat it for 10 to 15 seconds at a time. Scrape the bowl with a rubber spatula, and repeat until the chocolate is mostly melted. When only a few bumps remain, continue stirring until the chocolate is smooth, as the heat from the rest of the melted chocolate should be enough to completely melt it.
If your chocolate starts to harden when you dip it, just pop it back in the microwave for 10 seconds and stir.