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Hocus Pocus Platters

Creepy Cauldron platter (1)

Ingredients:

• Laughing Cow Cheese Triangles

• Poppy Seeds

• Yellow Pepper

• Mini Babybel cheeses

• Pretzel sticks

• Bread sticks

• Wholewheat tortilla wrap

• Chives

• Cherry tomatoes

• Black olives

• Cucumber slices

• Green grapes

• Baby carrots

• Blueberries

• Guacamole

Method:

Dip the Laughing Cow cheese triangles in poppy seeds and top each one with a strip of yellow pepper to make witches hats. Carve jack-o-lantern faces into the wax of mini Babybel cheeses and top with a pretzel stick stalk to make pumpkins. Make cuts along a strip of tortilla wrap and wrap around half a breadstick to make a broomstick. Tie together with chives. 

Cut cherry tomatoes in half, scoop out the flesh and fill with Laughing Cow cheese. triangles Top with slices of black olives to make eyeballs. Fill a small bowl with guacamole for a cauldron.

Place all your witchy foods on a large platter or tray and fill in the gaps with cucumber slices, green grapes, cherry tomatoes, baby carrots and blueberries. Decorate with toy spiders for extra creepiness!

Spooky Halloween Platter (2)

Ingredients:

• Mini Babybel cheeses

• Pretzel sticks

• Black olives

• Small crackers

• Laughing Cow Cheese Triangles

• Clementines

• Cucumber

• Baby peppers

• Cherry tomatoes

• Edible eye sprinkles

• Black grapes

• Blueberries

Method:

De-wax the mini Babybel Cheeses. Break the pretzel sticks into small pieces and push them into the sides of the cheese for spider legs. Finish the spiders with slices of black olives for eyes. Remove packaging from Laughing Cow cheese Triangles and pop into a disposable piping bag. Snip off the end and pipe cheese ‘bandages’ over crackers to make mummies. Finish the mummies with black olive slice eyes. 

Peel clementines and top with cucumber slicks to make pumpkins. Use Laughing Cow cheese to stick edible eye sprinkles to baby peppers and cherry tomatoes to make monster veggies.

Place all your spooky Halloween foods on a large platter or tray and fill in the gaps with cucumber sticks, black grapes and blueberries. Decorate with toy spiders for extra creepiness!

Actually, I think that these platters could be really useful (without the spooky bits!) as Christmas Platters.

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With Party Season Nearing, Mix up a Thatchers Cider Cocktail to Celebrate

Just right for Halloween, here is a delicious warming cider cocktail from Somerset family cider maker Thatchers, using Thatchers Gold and Thatchers Blood Orange ciders.

If you are looking for different ways to enjoy your Somerset Cider as the party season approaches, why not think about mixing a cider cocktail to celebrate with your friends and family?

It's a great way of enjoying your favourite Thatcher's cider in a slightly different way. A long and refreshing mix, or perhaps a twist on a sophisticated classic, we've got plenty of recipes to choose from on our website.

If our Blood Orange Cider is your favourite, why not try our new Thatcher's Toffee Apple Cider Cocktail. 

So bring out your inner mixologist by trying one of the cider cocktail recipes we have at www.thatcherscider.co.uk/cocktails .

Thatchers Toffee Apple Cider Cocktail

Ingredients   

25ml Jameson Whiskey                                                                 

25ml Kracken Spiced Rum 

25ml Tia Maria 

25ml Cinnamon syrup 

25ml Ginger beer 

150ml Thatchers Gold cider

Top up with Thatchers Blood Orange cider 

Method   

Shake the whiskey, rum & Tia Maria over ice in a Boston shaker 

Strain into a glass with ice 

Add the ginger beer & Thatchers Gold. Top with Thatchers Blood Orange Cider

Garnish with a slice of apple and a cinnamon stick.

Actually, thinking about it, this would make a great cocktail for drinking over the Christmas period, too!

More on home microgreens with the November issue of Kitchen Garden

My wife is a regular reader of the monthly gardener's magazine Kitchen Gardener.

In the November issue there are a wide variety of topics including how to make great compost, how to reduce your garden's carbon footprint, how to feed you soil to enable it to grow larger crops and a article on easy leafmould use.

You'll learn how to grow better garlic in your garden, how to fill your patch with tasty winter harvests.

You'll learn about fruit tree rootstocks, how to sow broad beans and their experts are running tests on a range of  compost bins.

Learn the mysteries of companion planting, how to get rid of your lawn and replace it with a vegetable plot and page after page of features and news. And all this for a very reasonable £5.99.

However! There's so much more! Because in this, the November issue, they are including, free of charge, what we estimate to be over twenty quid worth of seeds!

These are all from the highly reputable Mr Fothergill's seed company.

There are Mint, Broccoli, Garlic Chives, Lettuce, Mixed Spicy Salad Leaves, Carrot, Nantes 5, Scarlet Kale and Chervil all of which my wife is going to use as microgreen plantings.

There are also some Moneymaker Tomato seeds and Wildlife Attracting flower seeds, which can't be used for microgreens, but which will be excellent to plant in your kitchen garden.

Kitchen Garden is published by Mortons Media Group. the magazine's website address is www.kitchengarden.co.uk.

 

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