Recipes for these "Vampire Bite Cupcakes" can be found all over the internet, so I am not going to bore you with the recipe, just the technique and finished product.
Since I had a lot of things to make and assemble in just a few hours, I decided to go with just cake mix for the actual cupcake. Once they were cooked and cooled, I cut out a little cone in each one:
and filled it in with some canned cherry pie filling that I pureed in the blender:
Then popped the plug back in...
And frosted them with 7-minute icing (at least that's what I call it, you may call it something different... egg white, cream of tartar, sugar, etc whipped into submission for 7 minutes). Then I poked "bites" in the top with a metal skewer, and used a toothpick to drizzle some more cherry pie filling from the bites. It was slightly labor intensive, but I really liked the look of the finished product!
Another thing I made (that were gobbled up quite quickly) were appetizers made from a Pioneer Woman recipe. Now if you hate bacon, that's fine, but I don't want to hear about it. This one is for the bacon lovers.
Line up some club crackers on a cookie sheet (we made two trays of these). Cover each cracker with 1 tsp of Parmesan cheese (the kind in the green can).
Wrap each cracker in bacon (we found using a half of a piece of stretched bacon worked perfectly for each cracker).
Bake at 250 degrees for 2 hours. You're supposed to bake them on a rack, but I don't have any... so they just cooked in their own grease for two hours. We drained them on paper towels before serving. They were delicious!
Next time, I think we'll add a little brown sugar to it, too.
By the time I remembered to start photographing the food, much of it was devoured, so excuse the less-than-perfect pics.
Butternut squash and goat cheese on pumpernickel bread:
Kroger did not have the little loaves of pumpernickel, so I had to buy the big ones. We cut them into pumpkin shapes, and then thinly sliced the butternut squash and cut them into smaller pumpkin shapes (with cookie cutters, of course). I stuck the bread under the broiler to get it slightly toasty, and cooked the squash in a skillet with butter until tender. Then, I just spread a little goat cheese on the toasts and plopped the squash on top. I wish I had a better photo, as they were quite cute.
Another thing that seemed to go over quite well was the vegetable pizza - it's basically crescent rolls to make the crust, cream cheese, mayo and Hidden Valley Ranch mix to make the 'sauce', and then you just top it with chopped veggies of your choice and cheese.
Drinks: Apple Cider with Vanilla Vodka on the side, and Green punch, AKA, juice of the Devil. It is powerful stuff - orange vodka, midori, and sweet and sour mix, with some freshly squeezed orange wedges in it. It has an insane amount of vodka in it. You know the biggest bottle you can buy? Yep, that much, for one batch of punch.
It's not a Shawna party without a cheese board! We served several kinds of cheese (a white cheedar and a garlic cheddar, shropshire blue, manchego and brie) with Cheese Honey we bought at the Savannah Bee Company on our honeymoon. Delicious!
Food not pictured: Cheese dip (16 oz veleveeta, 8 oz chive and onion cream cheese, 1 cup shredded cheddar, and a clove of minced garlic, all melted together), pumpkin chipotle salsa (store-bought) & smoked salmon spread (smoked salmon, cream cheese and Dill Mix from the Pampered Chef mixed together and popped in oven long enough to warm through) served on cute little toasts.
My friend Daeon brought ghost pops. She is the cake pop queen!
That does it for the food. More photos of the party to come later. Happy Monday - who is hungry? ;)
Agh! I got a shout out. It's like I am a celebrity or something!!
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