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Halloween Fruit Salad For Breakfast, Snacks & Dessert

Candy Corn Fruit Cup
[1] Pineapple chunks and mandarin segments, topped with whipped cream. Here’s the recipe from Life In The Lofthouse (photo © Life In The Lofthouse).

Candy Corn Fruit Cup
[2] Pineapple chunks and orange segments, topped with vanilla yogurt. Here’s the recipe from Mr. Breakfast (photo © Mr. Breakfast).

Candy Corn Fruit Cup
[3] Pineapple and cantaloupe chunks topped with cottage cheese. Here’s the recipe from Tried And Tasty | Super Healthy Kids (photo © Super Healthy Kids).

  Bring some seasonal fun to breakfast or snacks, with fruit salad that mirrors candy corn.

The photos show how to use fresh or canned fruit and white topping to mirror the three-color layers of candy corn.

We’ve created the lists of options below.

  • You can mix different fruits in the same color layer, e.g., cantaloupe and mango. You can also add dried fruits to the color layer: sultanas (yellow raisins), dried apricot, dried cranberries or cherries.
  • If you can’t find what you want in the produce aisle, check the frozen aisle for fruits that are out of season (cherries, peaches, etc.).
  • You can add a layer of white fruits in addition to, or instead of, the white topping.
  • You don’t have to wait until Halloween, October 31st. Enjoy a week or 10-day lead-up with Halloween-themed recipes.
     
    ORANGE FRUITS
  • Apricots (dried, frozen, purée)
  • Cantaloupe
  • Jackfruit
  • Kumquats
  • Mandarin segments (the difference between mandarins and oranges)
  • Mango
  • Orange segments
  • Persimmon
  • Pomelo
  •  
    RED FRUITS

  • Blood orange segments
  • Cranberry relish
  • Grapes
  • Guava*
  • Cherries
  • Red figs
  • Red grapefruit
  • Strawberries
  • Watermelon
  •  
    WHITE FRUITS

  • Apples
  • Lychee
  • Pears
  • Rambutan
  •  
    YELLOW FRUITS

  • Bananas
  • Carambola (star fruit)
  • Yellow figs
  • Yellow kiwi
  • Peaches (frozen)
  • Pineapple
  • ________________

    *Guavas can have either pink or white flesh. As your grocer about the inside color.
    ________________
     
    WHITE TOPPINGS

  • Cottage cheese
  • Crème fraîche
  • Frozen whipped topping
  • Mascarpone
  • Sour cream
  • Whipped cream
  • Yogurt (plain or vanilla)
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    HALLOWEEN: Chocolate Graveyard Shake

    This nifty idea comes Lauren Toyota of Hot For Food, who created it as a nutritious vegan smoothie recipe.

    We adapted the concept as a chocolate-banana shake (peanut butter optional) with cow’s milk. You can:

  • Use your milk of choice: almond milk, dairy milk, soy milk), or a blend.
  • Add almond butter or peanut butter for more flavor and nutrition—or leave it out.
  • Make an adult version with chocolate liqueur or spirit of choice (pun intended).
  • Use a ripe, overripe or frozen banana. (With a frozen banana, omit the ice cubes. We stick overripe bananas in the freezer for baking or drinks.)
     
    RECIPE: CHOCOLATE-BANANA MILKSHAKE

    Ingredients Per Serving

  • 2 tablespoons frozen raspberries or other “bloody” berry
  • ¼ teaspoon water
  • 1 medium banana
  • 1 tablespoon cocoa powder
  • 1 tablespoon almond or peanut butter
  • 4 ice cubes (if not using frozen banana)
  • ¾ cup regular or chocolate milk
  • Optional: 1 tablespoon malted milk—or—
  • Optional: 1 tablespoon chocolate liqueur
  • Tombstone garnish: 1 Pepperidge Farm Milano* cookie, or other oval or rectangular cookie
  • 1 Wilton Food Writer marker or decorating gel
  •  
    Preparation

    1. WRITE “R.I.P.” on the tombstone cookie with the marker or gel.

    2. BLEND the frozen berries and water into a chunky purée. Set aside and rinse out the blender.

    3. ADD the remaining ingredients to the blender and process to desired consistency. Pour the shake into a serving glass. Drip the “blood” berry purée on the surface, insert the tombstone and serve.

      Halloween Milkshake Recipe
    [1] A fun Halloween treat. Photo courtesy Hot For Food.
    Wilton Food Writer
    [2] Wilton writing markets are the best way to “R.I.P.” (photo courtesy Wilton).
     
    ________________

    *We like Milano cookies because their surface is smooth, making them easy to write on. In the photo, the cookie was also brushed with diluted black food coloring to create a gray background color.
      

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    PRODUCT: New Chocolate Frosted Flakes From Kellogg’s

    Chocolate Frosted Flakes

    Chocolate Frosted Flakes
    Kellogg's Frosted Flakes

    Chocolate Frosted Flakes joins the family, begun in 1953 with original Frosted Flakes. The line now inclues Kellogg’s Cinnamon Frosted Flakes, Kellogg’s Frosted Flakes Chocolate with Marshmallows, Kellogg’s Frosted Flakes Choco Zucaritas, and Kellogg’s Frosted Flakes with Marshmallows (all photos courtesy Kellogg’s).

     

    “They’re grr-r-eat!” says Tony The Tiger, the cartoon character spokesman for Kellogg’s Frosted Flakes.

    Now, there’s a new addition to the Frosted Flakes portfolio, one that some people may find even grr-r-eater: Kellogg’s Chocolate Frosted Flakes.

    The product, which launches in November at participating retailers nationwide, coats the flakes with cocoa powder. The result: the same sweet, crunchy Frosted Flakes experience with chocolate.

    Imagine what the cocoa does to the cereal milk!

    Kellogg’s developed Chocolate Frosted Flakes by working with fans, testing how different types of cocoas interacted with both the cereal flakes and the milk left at the bottom of the bowl (“cereal milk”).

    Keep your eye out for them; and pick up extra boxes for sharing.
     
     
    THE HISTORY OF FROSTED FLAKES

    Cereal flakes were invented by Dr. John Kellogg and his brother Will Kellogg in 1894, at their Battle Creek, Michigan, sanitarium. They sought to create new forms of foods that were more nutritious and more easily digestible.

    They were experimenting with wheat, trying to make a more digestible substitute for bread, when they accidentally left a batch of cooked wheat in the kitchen as they attended to some pressing matters at the sanitarium.

    When they returned the next day, they found that the wheat had gone become hard and solid.

    Being on a strict budget, they decided to continue to process it by forcing it through rollers, hoping to obtain long sheets of the dough. To their surprise, what they found instead were flakes, which they toasted and served to their patients. A success!

    After four more years of trial and effort, the Kelloggs successfully applied the process to corn.

    However, they only sold their cornflakes by mail as a health food, to patients and former patients. Dr. Kellogg was a man of medicine, not interested in the greater commercial opportunities. general public.

    However, one of his patients, C.W. Post, stole Kellogg’s recipes and turned them into consumer products.

  • In 1896, he took Kellogg’s recipe for faux coffee and sold it as Postum, which became the fastest-growing business in America.
  • In 1898 he marketed Kellogg’s cereal flakes as Grape Nuts.
  • In 1902 he introduced Kellogg’s corn flakes to market as Elijah’s Manna. Criticism from religious groups led to a name change to Post Toaties, in 1908.
  •  
    Here’s more about the chicanery.

    Will Kellogg, the business brother, finally expanded the cereal business in 1903. Kellogg’s Corn Flakes grabbed the majority share of the corn flakes market, and their product has remained the #1 corn flake ever since.

     

    For 50 years, Kellogg’s Corn Flakes were the best-selling dry cereal in the U.S. Post Toasties, the Post version of corn flakes, were #2 (the Post product is now discontinued).

    On To Frosted Flakes

    In 1948, executives at Post Cereals (by then, part of General Foods, itself now part of Kraft Foods) noticed how well a sugar-coated cereal called Ranger Joe Popped Wheat Honnies was selling.

    They began developing their own sugar-coated wheat puffs, but it raised a serious moral dilemma for Post.

    At the time, all major cereal makers were focused on healthy food—the reason dry cereal was created in the first place. And even back then, it was known that sugar wasn’t great for children.

    Proponents of pre-sweetened cereal maintained, among other arguments, that adding a controlled amount of sugar during manufacturing was preferable to kids spooning on too much sugar from the sugar bowl. That was the rationale of Popped Wheat Honnies, the first sugar-coated cereal.

    In the end, they company was certain that that the sugar-coated cereal would be a big revenue generator; and the cereal was launched.

    This time, Kellogg’s followed Post. Kellogg’s Frosted Flakes, sugar-coated corn flakes, was launched in 1952 as Sugar Frosted Flakes. The word “sugar” was dropped from the name in 1983, as Americans began to become more aware of the downside of all that added sugar.

    Tony The Tiger was not a shoe-in.

    The advertising team recommended four animals that could appeal to children: an elephant, a gnu, a kangaroo and a tiger. The tiger was included because it was a symbol of energy, according to an art director who worked on the project.

    A TV commercial writer then named them all: Elmo the Elephant, Newt the Gnu, Katy the Kangaroo and Tony the Tiger. Jingle writers created a jingle for each animal. Tony’s four-line jingle ended with “They’re Grr-r-eat!”

    Elmo and Newt were dropped from production, but Tony and Katy appeared on separate boxes on the store shelves. Tony’s packages flew off the shelves. Alas, Kay’s just sat there…and was quickly retired.

    The company focused its energies exclusively on Tony, and the rest is history.

    (Source)

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    RECIPE: Cranberry-Orange White Chocolate Chip Cookies

    You might not think of cranberries as a category for innovation. After all, it’s a superfruit that should be eaten often.

    Decas Cranberry Products, a third-generation family business located in the heart of Massachusetts’ cranberry country, wants to help. Its products are available at retail under the Paradise Meadow brand: a line of all natural, non-GMO, sustainably-farmed cranberries.

    The line includes:

  • Fresh cranberries
  • Organic sweet dried cranberries
  • Reduced sugar LeanCrans®
  • Whole jumbo cranberries
  • Omega-3 fortified OmegaCrans®
  • Cooking and baking cranberries
  •  
    In the latter category are the new Julienne Cranberry-Orange Cooking & Baking Cranberries (photo #1), available at grocers nationwide. They’re julienned—chopped—to better distribute the flavor when you cook or garnish with cranberries.

    All Paradise Meadow products can be added to oatmeal and other breakfast cereal, green salads, protein salads (chicken, egg, etc.), trail mix, stuffing, and meat and poultry dishes.

    They can be baked into breads, muffins, cookies, and pies like cranberry-raisin pie and pecan-cranberry pie. Just add them to your favorite recipe. Use them as garnishes on sweet and savory dishes.

    Add them to rum raisin ice cream (recipe). Combine them with the raisins, or eliminate the raisins entirely.

    Here’s the history of cranberries, which had been harvested wild for some 12,000 years by Native Americans, from the Wampanoag People of what is now Massachusetts, south to the Leni-Lenape of New Jersey and west to the Algonquins of Wisconsin.

    The first cultivation of cranberries took place in Dennis, on Cape Cod, around 1816.
     
     
    THE BEST COOKIES

     

    Paradise Meadow Orange Cranberries

    Paradise Meadow Orange Cranberries

    One heavenly cookie, made with Paradise Meadow Julienne Cranberry-Orange Cooking & Baking Cranberries and white chocolate chips. Photos courtesy Paradise Meadow.

     
    When we previewed the cranberries at a recent trade event, the same time, we tasted one of the best cookies we’ve had in recent memory (recipe below). The combination of cranberry, orange and white chocolate, and the chewy texture, is simply…divine.

    You will be a cookie hero, or the best guest, when you bring a batch to work or to a party or get-together. Many thanks to Paradise Meadow for the recipe.

    RECIPE: CRANBERRY-ORANGE WHITE CHOCOLATE CHEWS

    Ingredients For 2 Dozen Cookies

  • 1/2 cup (1 stick) unsalted butter, room temperature
  • 1/4 cup granulated sugar
  • 1/2 cup dark brown sugar, packed
  • 1 large egg, room temperature
  • 1/2 tsp vanilla extract
  • 1-1/8 cup all-purpose flour
  • 1/2 tsp salt
  • 1/2 tsp baking soda
  • 1-1/2 cup – 1 6.5 oz. package Paradise Meadow Julienne Cranberry-Orange Cooking & Baking Cranberries
  • 1/2 cup (3 ounces) white chocolate chips
  •  
    Preparation

    1. PREHEAT the oven to 375°F. Line cookie sheets with parchment paper and set aside.

    2. BLEND the flour, salt and baking soda together and set aside.

    3. CREAM the butter with an electric mixer. Add the sugars and beat until light and fluffy. Add the vanilla and egg and beat well.

    4. SLOWLY ADD the flour to the sugar mixture and blend. Stir in the cranberries and white chocolate chips.

    5. DROP by rounded teaspoon onto prepared cookie sheets. Leave space between each cookie as they will spread while baking. Bake 8-10 minutes and cool on cookie sheets.

    Try to pace yourself!

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    TIP OF THE DAY: The History Of Halloween…And Fun Food Touches

    Halloween Latte
    Try your hand at latte art. Here’s a video showing how to create a jack o’ lantern in milk foam (photo Fig & Olive | Facebook). Or, make a latte ghost.

    Bat Waffles
    How can you make breakfast more Halloweeny? Turn toaster waffles into bats (photo Good Food Made Simple | Facebook).

    Eyeball Mozzarella Balls
    [3] Mozzarella eyeball snaks, made with bocconcini (bite-size balls) and olives (photo courtesy Bel Gioioso):.

    Vampire Sundae

    [4] Vampire ice cream sundae, with strawberry topping, mini marshmallows and chocolate chip eyes (photo Hannah Kaminsky | Bittersweet Blog).

      DID YOU KNOW…

    Halloween, short for All Hallows’ Evening, is celebrated on the evening of October 31st. It evolved from the festival of Samhain (sah-WEEN), celebrated by ancient Celts at the end of the harvest, a time to prepare for winter.

    Samhain marked the end of the “lighter half” of the year and beginning of the “darker half.” The Halloween colors of orange and black represent the lighter side and the darker side.

    The Celts believed that on October 31st, the boundaries between the worlds of the living and the dead overlapped and the deceased would come back to life and cause havoc, including sickness and damaged crops.

    To avoid the spirits and ghosts that roamed the countryside on October 31st, people began to wear masks and costumes—to mimic the spirits and avoid being recognized as human. To keep spirits and ghosts from their home, they placed candles in their windows, using hollowed-out turnips and other vegetables as the holder, or jack o’ lantern.

    The festival of Samhain would frequently include celebratory bonfires. The fires attracted insects, which attracted bats. Thus, bats became integrated into the holiday.

    Around 600 C.E., Christian missionaries replaced the pagan festival of Samhain with All Saints Day, also called All Hallows Even (even means evening).

    The name Halloween (or Hallowe’en) first appears in 16th-century Scotland, evolving from All Hallows’ Eve.
     
     
    BUT MUCH OF THE MODERN CELEBRATION CAME FROM AMERICA

    Carving pumpkins into jack-o-lanterns, trick-or-treating, costume parties and visiting “haunted houses”—not to mention pranking—evolved in the U.S. Pumpkins, a hardier, new world fruit (yes, a fruit), replaced the smaller turnips used in the Old Country.

    It began with 19th-century Irish and Scottish immigrants who brought the tradition over. In the late 20th century, the “holiday spirit” spread to other western countries, including Australia, Canada, Ireland, New Zealand, Puerto Rico and the U.K.

    > More history of Halloween.
     
     
    LEADING UP TO THE BIG DAY

    No matter how you plan to celebrate Halloween, you can serve little touches of the holiday for the week prior to the event.

    Halloween is too much fun to wait for one day of celebration. You don’t have to be a kid to want an entire Halloween Week.

  • Cut marshmallows into ghost shapes, or paint jack o’lantern faces on them, and float them on hot chocolate.
  • Use a squeeze bottle of ketchup to put pumpkin faces on fried eggs.
  • Make bat waffles (photo #2).
  • Try your hand at latte art. Check out these videos for jack o’lantern and ghost art.
  • Dribble strawberry dessert topping from the rim of a “bleeding” glass of milk or other beverage.
  • Turn deviled eggs into rotten deviled eggs, with some food coloring (recipe).
  • Put candy eyeballs on any dessert.
  • Wrap strips of refrigerator rolls around hot dogs and other foods to “mummify” them (recipe #1) and #2.
  • Coil dough into snakes (recipe)
  • Turn anything round into an eyeball (photo #3).
  • Put black olive spiders on mini pizzas, as sandwich garnish, etc.
  •  
    Simply look at everything you’re planning to serve, and see how you can tweak it for seasonal fun.

    If you need inspiration, check online sites like Pinterest or Google Images to see what others have done.

    > The history of Trick or Treating.

    > The history of the jack-o-lantern.

    > Fun Halloween food recipes.

    > Halloween cocktail recipes.

     
     

    CHECK OUT WHAT’S HAPPENING ON OUR HOME PAGE, THENIBBLE.COM.

     
     

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