Semi Spooky and Somewhat Chaotic Halloween Baking
Halloween baking with friends
By M Yeager
Halloween season is among us. It is time for costumes, snacks and all-around spooky camaraderie. All of these things make up some of my favortie pastimes, baking especially. As an elementary school kid walking into my classroom during the open house with my dad, one of the first things I would do after putting my supplies in my desk was scribble down my name on the class Halloween party list. I love baking and cooking, especially with a theme and when it’s something I haven’t done before.
I consider myself a slightly chaotic and impatient baker. Many times I will skip around while reading instructions, which often concludes with me asking my dad for help because I may have accidentally scorched chocolate or the batter isn’t quite right. My dad swoops in with his chef magic and everything works out for the most part. However, when I am not baking at home but with my friends, it does get more chaotic and more things can go slightly wrong. After all, what is a friend group if you don’t occasionally get a bit chaotic?
During fall break, I spent the weekend with my two best friends, Kat Hage ‘22 (English) and Rin Kilde ‘23 (Public Policy) at their apartment. We baked a few Halloween treats to share with the readers of The Wheel. In the spirit of trying new things, we made Pan de Muerto, a Mexican sweet bread important to the celebration of Día de los Muertos, and Bluttrank, a German Halloween party punch. We also made dark chocolate cookies with butterscotch, white chocolate and semi sweet chocolate chips.
Bluttrank (Blood Potion)
Our Bluttrank in its makeshift cauldron and a fancy cup. Photo credit: Rin Kilde
The Bluttrank consists of apple juice (preferably apple cider), orange juice, ginger ale, lime juice and a small amount of maple syrup. Not a whole lot of effort goes into this recipe other than measuring and mixing each of the ingredients before refrigerating it. The mixture of beverages ends up being a cloudy orange brown, so in order to achieve the red color, you must add red food coloring. The recipe also calls for red sanding sugar for the rims of the glasses you’ll be serving the punch in.
As typical college students relying on what we already had and what we could find fairly cheap, we substituted some of the ingredients. Instead of apple cider, we used regular apple juice and the orange juice we had was high pulp. When we tried it, it still tasted fairly good. This punch was mine and Rin’s personal favorite of all the things that we made. As for the taste, Rin summed it up well: “It was just so many flavors packed into one singular liquid.”
Pan de Muerto
My very first bread!
Before baking this, I had never made homemade bread that required yeast. Yeast is a tricky thing with lots of temperamental steps: Your water cannot be too cold or the yeast won’t activate. If it’s too hot, it’ll kill the yeast. We did not have a thermometer, which made it even trickier. After spending about ten minutes trying to find a way around the lack of thermometer, we used the inside of our wrists to determine the correct water temperature, and it worked! Pro tip: I do still prefer the thermometer. It is far more precise and your wrist is less likely to get burnt in the process.
Minnesota Handmixer Fright!
We had to let the bread rise twice, once for an hour and a half, and once for an hour after creating dough in the shape of bones on top of the loaf. Making the bones was a bit hard, especially with the dough being sticky and me forgetting to flour my hands. The recipe also called for a dough hook and a stand mixer, both of which we did not have available. Instead, we used a hand mixer, which we had to abandon halfway through adding the flour. Not all of the flour that the recipe called for combined nicely in the dough, which could explain why it was still quite sticky. Despite these things, it wasn’t half bad.
Dark Chocolate Halloween Chip Cookies
Our funky little cookies
The cookies followed the typical recipe for making cookies from scratch. There were only a few more add-ins, namely cocoa powder, which gave the cookies a more chocolatey taste and a darker color. Instead of only one or two kinds of baking chips, we added three, which combined with our ‘measure it by your heart’ philosophy, creating a dough that was approximately fifty percent baking chips. Some of the baking chips were not able to be combined thoroughly with the dough, and sat sadly in the bottom of our comically large mixing bowl.
The dough didn’t turn out to the consistency that we wanted, even after some adjustments. At first, it was too sticky to be able to roll into balls, and after being chilled, it was difficult to roll due to stiffness. When in the oven, they didn’t spread out a whole lot, which led to the first batch being too thick. Before putting the second batch in the oven, we pushed them down, and they spread out a bit more. In the end, as with all of our creations that weekend, it tasted delicious and was Kat’s favorite of the three.
Between the bread rising, the cookies chilling and the time that each of them needed to bake, we had a lot of downtime. This made for a perfect chance to pester my friends with Halloween-related questions.
Do you have any plans for Halloween?
Kat H: Playing Dungeons and Dragons (DnD)!
Rin K: I want to run a Halloween-themed DnD one-shot!
What’s your favorite Halloween snack?
Kat H. Pumpkin bars.
Rin K: Probably candy bars like Snickers and Milky Way.
What’s your favorite Halloween costume?
Kat H: Kevin from Welcome to Night Vale.
Rin K: I went as an inflatable wiggly car lot guy once, that was fun.
What’s your favorite part of the season?
Kat H: My favorite part is the leaves falling.
Rin K: I like ghost stories and that sort of thing, just creeping each other out. And candy.
What about you, readers? What’s your favorite snack? Your favorite costume and favorite part of the season? Do you have any plans this Halloween? Will you try to make any of these recipes? Whatever your plans are, be sure to stay spooky and safe! After all, we don’t want a repeat of the Minnesota Handmixer Fright.
Recipes can be found here:
Bluttrank:
24 ounces (oz) apple cider (or apple juice)
24 oz Ginger Ale
24 oz orange juice
2 tablespoons lime juice
3 tablespoons maple syrup
Red food coloring
Ice (optional)
Red sanding sugar (optional)
