A Wonderful Weekend

We had such a fun busy weekend. As usual, lots of good food was involved. The Halloween party was the last of the weekend events.  Since it was Halloween themed,  I thought this would be an appropriate centerpiece.  The kids loved it and took it home to share with their friends. They will be very popular at school today.

I made my ghost cake but since we were having the worst buttercream weather, it came out looking really scary!  This was when it was first done and it continued to look worse and worse.  By party time, it looked like a ghost pool. Everyone ate it anyway. My nephew said that if I hadn't pointed out that it melted, he never would have noticed. Halloween parties cover up many failures!

I had to make chocolate chip cookies,  My Great Niece and Nephew love these.  They take them home and freeze them and then take them in their lunches to school.  They said that all of their friend's love them and always want to trade at lunchtime to get some.

 My daughter made these mini cheesecakes.  They are caramel apple cakes with an oatmeal/graham crust.

 Everyone loved the pretzels!

 The pretzels were eaten with German obatzda spread, garlic butter and salted radishes. No one had ever eaten pretzels this way and they all loved them.

This is a bad pic but this was the main dish.  Bat stew (daube provencal) served with slugs with weeds and flesh (gnocchi cooked in browned butter with crispy proscuitto and fried sage.  Everyone was properly grossed out but wolfed it down once they cleared it with me that no bats or slugs were actually killed in the making of this.  No one had ever had a daube before and now they are all fans.

My daughter is quite the cake baker.  My Great Niece wants to be a chef.  While I was busy preparing for the party, my GN spent the day at my daughter's baking a cake.

 My daughter bought lots of fancy sprinkles and turned my GN loose.

 They made a confetti cake and my GN baked it almost all by herself.

 It was very fancy by the end and a perfect little girls dream cake. I think a new tradition has been created; they had a blast.

The Chef had to work the whole weekend and couldn't come to any of the dinners but he did the cutest thing.  He left a wonderful chef's knife for my GN with a note encouraging her to follow her dreams and cook.  What a guy!  It was a wonderful weekend and many good memories were made.