By By Penny Randall / staff writer
Oct. 30, 2002
Would you like a little Orange Ooze to drink with your Snaky Hallowieners?
Halloween is just about the only time of the year when you will hear that question.
It's the time of the year when the food people eat takes on names that symbolize the one day they dress in scary costumes and beg for candy.
Toretha Norman knows all about food on Halloween. Her job as a cake decorator at the Foodmax bakery allows her to create spooky cakes, ghostly cupcakes and pumpkin-shaped cookies.
Sweet holiday
And with an estimated $1.93 billion in candy sales, Halloween is the sweetest holiday of the year, beating Easter, Valentine's Day and Christmas.
In fact, one quarter of all the candy sold each year is purchased between Sept. 15 and Nov. 10.
Norman isn't surprised. She estimated she will bake and decorate almost 700 cupcakes in time for Halloween.
With five years of cake decorating experience under her apron, Norman can turn a simple sheet cake into a Halloween masterpiece in minutes.
Customer requests for cake designs include pumpkins, skeletons and Frankenstein's monster. Norman said she sticks with the traditional fall colors of orange, black, red and yellow.
Halloween food
Professional cooks aren't the only ones who can create fun Halloween food. Anyone can do it if they let their mind wander to the spooky side and also visit several food sites on the Internet.
Fritz Sonnenschmidt, national chairman of the American Academy of Chefs, suggested on Better Homes &Gardens Web site that people prepare deep-fried ants otherwise known as deep-fried shredded coconut.
Chocolate witch hats make fun decorations for kids to decorate on cupcakes.
Robert Yamarone, an award-winning food stylist, suggested at the Better Homes Web site that people melt a few squares of semisweet chocolate, dip Bugle corn chips and place them on a chocolate wafer.
Susan Goss, another chef, suggested on the Web site her idea for an edible tombstone centerpiece.
Grind chocolate wafer cookies in the food processor until crumbs form and then mound the crumbs on a tray. On the ends of rectangular shortbread cookies, spread marshmallow fluff and press them into the cookie "dirt."
Complete the creepy graveyard look by scattering gummy worms and spiders around the tasty tombstone.
X-RAY CANDY
Jeff Anderson Regional Medical Center will X-ray candy for trick-or-treaters from 6 p.m.-8 p.m. Halloween. Free. Enter through the 23rd Avenue side of the hospital and follow the signs to the radiology department. For information, call 553-6894.