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Barmy Blue's Bland Blog

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So. Halloween pictures. Like I said before, bit of a nightmare. There's probably a better way of lowering the picture quality than the way I did. This is what I get for using mum's camera instead of my phone. The picture quality on my phone is infinitely worse so, therefore, less shrinking to do. Yes. I said shrinking. And I don't just mean file size, though it was all to reduce the file size. Maybe if I had some fancy photo editing software rather than MS paint it wouldn't be such a problem but I only really need to edit photos for the Halloween posts so what's the point?

Now, since it's been a year since I last did this I'm not sure if the rules have changed, but last year I was disappointed to find that I could only put five in one blog. And since I had eight, I put the three that weren't so good in my last one. Except for Titch. I put him in there because the alternative title was Meet Titch.

So. What do I still have to upload?

These are my spiders.
spiders.JPG
I copied them from a recipe on YouTube, with a few minor changes. I didn't have those tiny round sprinkles for eyes but I think these are just as good, and tastier. Raspberry fudge balls from the cake decorating section of Tesco. The original recipe also used liquorish wheels cut into strips for legs. I don't like Liquorish. And I had an assorted pack of gummy laces. I'd originally got the strawberry ones for the optic nerve on my eyeballs. But I used the purple ones for spider legs, makes them a bit more fun. Though it also makes them a bit stickier and kind of gooey if they get wet. I split the orange and yellow laces with mum, though, in hindsight, I probably should've kept them to pad out the bags with a bit more colour. I wanted my spiders to have cute spooky fangs so rather than cutting a corner of liquorish for fangs I painted some on with white chocolate. Mum pointed out that they might be mistaken for eyes. Never mind. They're filled with lime jelly that I dyed a bit greener, to look more like goo and made cloudy with a little condensed milk (as done in the recipe I copied). Annoyingly, bought a tin of condensed milk because I couldn't find the squeezy tube from last year and only used a teaspoon, so now I've got a tin of condensed milk in the fridge to get rid of. Found the tune yesterday too. That's annoying. Should've just got a new tube. Not quite sure what possessed me to pick up a tin.
There were actually two spiders leftover. Mum had both of them because I hate lime, particularly lime jelly. But mum hates dark chocolate so it was a tricky situation. She was happy to eat them though so that's good.

These are my eyeballs.
eyes.JPG
They should've been easy but things didn't go so well. I wanted to fill them with melted marshmallows. But I didn't was them to be tough and nougaty like those pumpkins I made the year before last. So I tried melting them in a saucepan. They browned a little. They melted. They set. Nougaty. So I ate those and made some new shells. I considered filling them with a clear jelly, but I was already set on jelly filled spiders so maybe that would be too much jelly.
I happened to browse the spreads section of Tesco hoping to find an alternative. I found something that many of you may be familiar with.
Marshmallow Fluff.
Looks to be a recent American import to our supermarkets. I have to say. Packaging is too plain, doesn't really hook a passerby unless they're looking for it. I kind of was. Red white and blue. Far from imaginative.
So. I now have a jar of that to get rid of too because I put it in the eyes. It was absolutely the perfect filling and just what I wanted.
I just put a blob of white chocolate on the backs of the eyes then stuck in the laces. Doing the detail was tricky. I wanted to make it obvious that they were eyes. I tried to use some of those black sweet melty things from last year but I couldn't get it to the right consistency. Originally the pupil was going to be smoothly incorporated into the shell. In the end I had to do plain white chocolate shells (because I didn't have any dark chocolate melted at the time) and put on dark chocolate spots later. That sounded easier than it was. I dipped it in, but they were fresh out of the freezer so the dark chocolate set instantly. I dipped the first eye too deeply so it looks super freaky. So they kind of set to a sort of point. And, like that, they still didn't look enough like eyes. If I'd had some of those edible pens this would've been easier, but I didn't. So I painstakingly painted in food colouring with a toothpick, with varying results.
Now. They look great in the picture. But what you don't see is that the colouring hasn't dried. How could it. This was done the night before Halloween. And they were kept in the fridge, that breaks down. So all my chocolates had a semi-permanent coating of condensation, which made it a nightmare to paint the eyes. That in itself is not such a problem. But when I came to put them in the plastic bags, then we had a problem.
All that veiny detail was smooshed into a red, blue or green, smeary mess. Although, maybe that was good, made them look like bloody eyes.
They were still pretty good though. I think there were only two left.

Here are my batpops and skulls, only one of each.
batskulls.jpg
We had some skulls leftover but the batpops all went. There were only six batpops because the mould can only do two at a time, unless you only want half a bat . There were four of each skull save for either the dark of milk chocolate, because I dropped one. The batpops were tricky to get into the bags because of their wingspan.

These are my mummy pops.
mummys.jpg
Again I copied this recipe from YouTube but with a twist. The video used little sugar eyes. I couldn't get those so used the polka dot cupcake sprinkles with a spot of dark chocolate for the pupils. Gave them a little more character. I also wanted to hint at decaying flesh so mixed one black melty thing in with the white chocolate. It took a while to mix in but came out perfectly. The only problem was that I was using double stuff oreos so when it came so squeezing on the bandages it didn't match up on the sides because the dip in the middle was just a bit too much. Also, I discovered later on, that the sticks I used were a bit too weak for the oreos. But all in all they turned out well. There were a few of those leftover.

And finally.
These are my witch's fingers.
fingers.JPG
Now the idea is not so original, because I know many other people have done many similar things but I sought no help for these. I had an image in my mind and this is pretty close to it.
It all started when I got a box of these little sour gummy sweets. I just planned to use them as padding in the bags. But the idea of giving out sour sweets was just me being evil . I opened a bag to try them and found that they okay. But more importantly, king of pointed. This gave be the idea of using them as fingernails. Then the idea of the sponge witch's fingers kind of exploded into existence. I later had the idea of using a stick of pocky as a bone. That had varied success.
I used a syrup sponge cake which was not as dense as I'd expected. I had to be very gentle and it crumbled as I was cutting it. I dipped the pocky in white chocolate and inserted it into the cake slices to make it stick(originally I had six but one fell apart as I was putting the pocky in) It was so fragile.
I bought some green icing and put that on. It took a little shaping but once it was on I didn't need to worry about the cake so much. Then I put on some decorations I got from tesco. The green things are pistachio flavoured. I was a little worried about that too. It's only a gentle pistachio flavouring but I was a bit worried about allergies.
I stuck them on with a little white chocolate. Then I decided to add a little more colour but using the red raspberry fudge bits.
Unfortunately, pocky was never designed to be strong enough to handle that kind of weight, so the ends kept snapping off. But that's okay.
We had three leftover, which was a bit of a shame. oh well. They looked great.
The fingers were actually the first thing I made. I was worried they'd get sticky with the condensation (they were wrapped but still) but they were absolutely fine.

So. Those are my pictures.

Bluebiird out.
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Comments

  1. qimissung's Avatar
    They are all delightfully creepy. I actually kind of shivered when I looked at the witch's fingers.
  2. Virgil's Avatar
    Wow. Those are great. Have you thought about making them for a living? I especially love the spiders.