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Our not-so-plain menu.

Even thought Trick-or-Treat is usually the highlight of our Halloween festivities, it falls on a night other than Halloween in our city, so the actual holiday is often times overlooked. I wanted things to be a little different today, so I took our 'plain Jane' dinner menu, added some new titles to our dishes, created a cute menu to print out and a more interesting meal suddenly took the place of hot dogs and fries.

Hot dogs became 'Frank-enstein-furters' and fries were now 'Dry Bones'. The standard green olives and corn kernels transformed into 'Moldy Eyeballs' and 'Monster Teeth'. Macaroni salad was dubbed 'Bowl Full of Brains' and our dessert of cream cheese filled chocolate and pumpkin cupcakes was renamed 'Ooze-filled Cupcakes'. The kids couldn't have liked their dinner better and not one little nose was turned up at any food served tonight. Even dad and our older teen got into the fun and asked for everything by name.

Once the kids got going they even renamed the condiments and drinks on the table; Dragon's Blood (ketchup), Bug Juice (iced tea) and Toe Jam (mustard) became part of the cast as well. I think if I had let them go, they may have renamed everything in the refrigerator! A few of the kids got costumes on for dinner and they got such a kick out of the menu I printed up that they kept refering back to it to make sure they had the food names right.

Ooze-filled Cupcakes

The pumpkin version were my own favorite Pumpkin Chip Muffins (without the chips) and the chocolate were a basic Wacky Cake recipe. Both cupcakes were filled with a cream cheese mixture and topped with chocolate chips before baking.

Cream Cheese Mixture

2--8 oz pkgs cream cheese, softened
1/2 cup sugar
1 tsp vanilla extract
2 eggs

Beat together until smooth.

I used large muffin tins rather than smaller cupcake tins to make these in. I poured about 1/2 a cup of cake batter into lined muffin cups and then added a heaping tablespoon of cream cheese mixture to the top. I sprinkled chocolate chips--about 10 or so--on top of the cream cheese and then baked for about 35 minutes until a toothpick inserted in the center came out clean. Alternately you can put a 1/4 cup of batter into a cup, followed by cream cheese mixture and chocolate chips and then topped of with another 1/4 cup of batter. Either way, they are delicious! (I got 24 cupcakes, 12 of each, from this recipe.)