Beth's Chocolate Flower Pot Gift

When I was on book tour in the spring a young woman showed up on my doorstep holding a flowerpot filled with popcorn, made completely out of chocolate. I was blown away. Her name was Beth Jackson Klosterboer and she told me she had worked as a chocolatier and event planner for over 20 years. Her newest venture was going to be a Halloween book. I asked her to send it to me when it came out and now that I have looked at Hungry Halloween I must recommend it to anyone who loves to have fun on this very unique holiday. As Beth says in her introduction,

“Whether you are baking to host an elaborate Halloween bash or are simply in search of a fun treat to serve your kids on beggar’s night, Hungry Halloween is a great resource filled with delicious and imaginative recipes.”

Now, I can testify to the imaginative part — when I did my show on the Food Network,  every year for ten years we did at least one Halloween show and  it became hard to find new and unusual stuff to demo. Everything in this book seems new and unusual to me and, the recipes have the added bonus that most of them are made from scratch. No scary ingredients used here!

Beth developed, styled and photographed the 44 recipes herself. There are many “how to” photos and templates at the back of the book to be used for design. It would be easy for anyone, even a novice cook or baker, to follow these recipes.

Beth has a website as well: http://www.HungryHalloween.com which you might want to check out for more ideas. She lists sources on the website for the special equipment needed to make the recipes. The sources are featured in the right hand column at the very bottom of the home page. If you scroll down, there are pictures of each of the items with a click-able link directly to the amazon.com page.

These items are all on the list: brain mold, disposable pastry bags, gel food coloring, paste food coloring, spray food color, decorating tips, stencil rollers, blank (a.k.a. clear) stencil sheets, lollipop sticks and the skull pan, as well as, most of the candy molds and cookie cutters.

There is only one item that is not available on Amazon.com. The werewolf sucker mold is available from Cybercakes.com at http://cybercakes.com/shopsite_sc/store/html/product1660.html

and, most important, where can you find the book? On Amazon.com.

Hungry Halloween