7 Layer Taco Dip

Everyone loves my Taco dip, but I'm not sure that it's actually 7 layers. It is a great way to prepare for any party, because you can make the dip the morning of, and then stick it into the oven once guests arrive. This way, they are guaranteed to enjoy a warm, melted, delicious taco dip!

Ingredients

• 1 package taco seasoning
• 1- 16oz can refried beans
• 1 - 8 oz cream cheese
• 1- 16oz sour cream (use half)
• 1 jar salsa
• 1 bunch green onions
• 1 can black olives
• Shredded cheddar cheese (lots)
• Avocados
• lime (for garnish if making guacamole)

Layers:
1) mix beans with taco seasoning

2) Sour cream and cream cheese (blended)

3) Guacamole (or in this case sliced avocado)

4) black olives

5) green onions

6) salsa

7)cheese

Bake at 350 degrees F for 30 min (or until cheese is melted), serve and be happy. Make sure you enjoy some of the dip quickly, because it won't last long!

Halloween Popcorn Pumpkins

Halloween Popcorn Pumpkins are another great Halloween treat that don't require any baking to finish. (There is some cooking involved with melting the marshmallows, but that is cooking, not baking!)

I found that 3T of unpopped popcorn was enough to create the 5 cups of popcorn requited for the recipe. I burned the first batch of popcorn, but otherwise I found this project to be really simple. To create the orange color, I added 7 drops red food coloring and 13 drops yellow food coloring. I used chocolate twizzlers as the brown stems.

These popcorn balls are absolutely addictive. They are a real mixture of sweet and salty, and I wish that I had made more than one batch!

The pumpkins that we have at our Halloween party. The non-edible pumpkins include a 3-D paper pumpkin and some knit Jack-o-Lanterns.

Black Cat Cookies

So I really enjoyed making the popcorn balls (which will be discussed in the next post) and they were delicious, but they got stale really quickly. These chocolate cat cookies are FANTASTIC. I did not use sticks as the recipe called for, which is probably why I ended up with 24 cookies rather than the 12 the recipe predicts.

The tip to dip the bottom of the glass you're using to flatten the cookies in sugar first is a good one. This prevented a lot of sticking and the sprinkling of sugar on top gave a really pretty visual effect. I "carefully" matched the candy corns for each eye (just to make sure that the colors matched on each cookie.) This is a recipe that I will absolutely do again, and I will try to find an excuse to use them for other holidays.

This is a great example of how you can make fun shapes without the use of Halloween cookie cutters. (Of course, with cookie cutters then you'll be able to make more shapes!)

Spooky Halloween Eyeballs

This is a recipe that I was able to cut in half. The chocolate peanut butter balls ("Spooky Halloween Eyeballs") were such a hit, that I made these (without looking like eyeballs) for my Christmas party, too.

I didn't have any smooth peanut butter, but I did have a lot of chunky!I crushed the peanuts it in the food processor, and used this rather than a hand mixer to do all of the mixing for the recipe. I ended up with a smooth and creamy filling that tasted like the inside of a Reese's peanut butter cup.

I had some difficulty covering these eyeballs in white chocolate. As you can see from the picture below, The resulting eyeballs did not end up nice and round, even though the peanut butter balls that I dipped into the chocolate where spherical.

I mixed a little bit of blue food coloring in the remaining white chocolate to make the irises. The pupils were tiny chocolate chips. Since I had run out of white chocolate, I covered the remaining peanut butter mixture in semi-sweet chocolate, adding two "irises" to function as eyes.

Witch Finger Cookies

Dough for the Witch Finger cookie recipe would work really well as a spritz cookie recipe for a cookie press. Since the recipe included 1 egg, I could not cut it an half and I therefore ended up with dozens of fingers! To add some variety, I added 8 drops of green food coloring to half of the dough.

Raw cookies ready for baking

Each cookie was rolled into a snake, and then pinched to create the knuckles. The almost were baked on the tip of the cookies to make the "finger nail" impression. I LOVE that you reattach these almonds with red gel icing. This really gives the cookies a spooky touch.

Halloween In April

Yes, Halloween is over 6 months away, but it's never too early to start thinking about what you'd make for a party! Last Halloween, I had a blast making a bunch of themed Halloween Cookies for a party I was hosting. In the weeks that follow, I will tell you more about these dishes (but for now I just wanted to tempt you with fabulous pictures!)

I don't think you really want to know how much butter I needed to make all of these treats... but let's just say it required a trip to Costco!

Finishing touches really set the mood!

Chocolate covered goodies. No baking required.

You can't have a Halloween party without some cookies!

Pumpkin posse. I would only recommend eating one of these pumpkin types.

I'm going to have to try to top myself next year, so I'm already collecting new recipes! Stay tuned to read more about these Halloween cookies in the upcoming weeks.