Today’s Homemaker

I’m going to a Halloween party tonight, and I’ve been going back and forth on what to bring. I had a lot going on this week, so I wasn’t sure that I wanted to attempt anything too time-consuming. Luckily, I found these little ghosties that are so cute and radically easy. All they are is Nutter Butter cookies dipped in vanilla-flavored almond bark with half-jelly beans for eyes.

The recipe (if you can call it that) calls for 6 ounces of vanilla-flavored almond bark, which I’m not too sure if I like. I could just hear my husband crunching into one and saying (mid-bite) “Hmm…these are okay. Why didn’t you just use white chocolate?”. So I did. I found that 6 ounces is a gross underestimate. It covered about 20 cookies, which is a little more than half of a container of Nutter Butters. This was a bad thing, but no bother…I went to the store later on to get some more supplies.

They were out of Nutter Butters. Out! All they had were these Nutter Butter wafers that do not even resemble the cookie. So I had to think fast. And what did I find to my increasing delight? Bone-shaped graham crackers…Scooby snacks, actually. I think you can see where my mind was headed.

So anyway, back at the stove. In case you’re not familiar with the process of melting chocolate (I tend to think everyone is as addicted to The Food Network as I am, but somehow I doubt it), all you do is put the chocolate in a clear glass or metal bowl (Pyrex works well) and set the bowl over a pot of simmering (not boiling) water, stirring occasionally until melted. Or, just put the chocolate in a glass bowl in the microwave on 70 percent power for a minute, stir well, then put it back in for 10 to 15 second increments (stirring after each time) until melted.

If I were you, I would choose the latter. If even a few drops of water get into your precious chocolate, it will seize up on you like it has rigamortis. This happened to me on my second batch, actually. It could have been the brand I used–the first batch melted without a hitch, and it was the Baker’s brand. The second batch were Nestles Toll House white chocolate morsels. Thankfully, I read somewhere that you can add 1 tablespoon vegetable shortening per cup of white chocolate to try and rescue it. Wikipedia disagrees, but it worked swimmingly for me.

With my first batch (the “ghosts”), the dipping process wasn’t as fool-proof as I had expected. I largely suspect this is because 6 ounces of chocolate in a big Pyrex bowl tends to spread itself kind of thin over the bottom. I made do by laying the cookies face down in the chocolate, then flipping them over to coat the other side. It was still an awkward approach, since I only wanted the top 2/3 of the cookie covered.

My second batch (the “bones”) worked great, since I was covering them completely–I just poured several in the bowl and used a pair of tongs to cover them with chocolate and place them on the rack to set.

For the ghosts, I figured that black jelly beans usually taste like licorice (not my favorite), so I opted for mini Reeses Pieces instead. I also decided they needed mouths as well as eyes.

Spooooooky.