Spider cheeseball

Spider Cheeseball & Other Spookactular Halloween Fun Foods with Olives!

OCTOBER 28, 2011 BY SARA @MOMENDEAVORS

Do you like black olives? We LOVE them! Like, a lot! They’re a must-have on the rel­ish tray at every fam­ily hol­i­day get together. Yes, every. Really. The kids love them too. They’re SO tasty, and seri­ously what other food can you put onto all 5 of your fin­gers & pop off to eat?! Fun!

And, if you’ve been around the blog, you know that I also love mak­ing “fun foods”/“edible crafts”! So, when the Cal­i­for­nia Olive Com­mit­tee con­tacted me and asked if I’d cre­ate a “spook­tac­u­lar” Hal­loween recipe/craft with their Cal­i­for­nia Black Ripe Olives, I couldn’t say no!  My mind was imme­di­ately full of ideas as the black color is PERFECT for Halloween!

So, here’s a few options spook­tac­u­lar options, per­fect for your Hal­loween par­ties this week­end or Mon­day night’s dinner!…

Spi­der Cheeseball

Given my love of the spi­der web pret­zels and the spi­der theme we have going on this year, I imme­di­ately knew I wanted to attempt a giant spi­der with the olives. And, I LOVE the way it turned out! At first, I wasn’t sure what I’d do for the body, but a cheese­ball seemed like it would be perfect.

Ingre­di­ents:

*Recipe adapted from A South­ern Fairy­tale (if you like foot­ball, you should totally check hers out!!!  )

Cheese­ball:

• 2 (8 oz) pack­ages of cream cheese, softened
• 1 1/2 C shred­ded cheese blend (I used a mix of sharp, colby jack, and mon­terey cheddar)
• 3/4 C fresh shred­ded parme­san cheese
• 1/2 C mayonnaise
• 2 T gar­lic & onion chives, chopped (you could do green onions instead, but we had chives in the garden)
• 2 tsp red pep­per flakes
• 1 tsp gar­lic powder

Spi­der:

• 3–5 cans black olives (depend­ing on cheese­ball size & olive size)
• wooden skew­ers (I used 4, each cut into smaller pieces)
• pimento (for eyes)

Direc­tions:

First up, make the cheeseball.

1. blend together all the cheeses using a hand or stand mixer. Then, add in chives (or onions), sea­son­ings, and mayo. 2. Once creamed together, shape into a spi­der (head & abdomen) onto a plat­ter (I didn’t use all of it, because there was some­thing else I wanted to try too). 3. Halve olives and begin cov­er­ing the spi­der. Then begin con­struc­tion on the legs. 4. For the legs, cut seg­ments off a skewer (size deter­mined by the size of your spi­der). Stick the cut skewer into the cheese­ball (where the head and abdomen meet). Then, lace the olives onto the skewer (through their holes), leav­ing a lit­tle bit of the end of the skewer open. For the bot­tom part of the leg, lace the olives onto the skewer leav­ing the top part of the skewer open. To attach the two skew­ers, place one olive such that both skew­ers will stick into it (and con­nect). Repeat the process until the entire spi­der is com­plete. For the eyes, slice an olive so that you have open rings. Inside each open­ing, place a pimento for some creepy red eyes!

Bat Bites

As a for­mer biol­ogy teacher, it’s no sur­prise that I like the creepy crea­tures right?! And, bats def­i­nitely qual­ify (although, they actu­ally are really good to have around!) And, ever since last year, when I saw these lit­tle bat bites, I knew I wanted to try them. But, the out­side is cracked black pepper–and that wouldNEVER work in our house. So, what to do?! Well, why not black olives?

You’ll just need some of the remain­ing cheese­ball mix­utre to make small balls with.

Then, cover with chopped olives, stick in some black corn tor­tilla chips for wings, and pimen­tos for eyes. Then, voila, lit­tle bat bites! 

Veg­gie Jack O’ Lantern

So easy!

Sup­plies:

–2–4 1 lb. bags of baby carrots

–2 cans of black olives

- cucum­ber, broc­coli, or cel­ery for the stem

Direc­tions:

Fill a large plate/platter with baby car­rots and use black olives to make the face of the jack o’ lantern. Start by out­ling the spaces for the olives with car­rots. Once they are some­what in place, put one layer of olives down (most of them cut in half). Then to make the plat­ter look fuller & more 3D, add more car­rots and a sec­ond layer of olives. It made a big dif­fer­ence!  The stem is a cut cucumber.

So, do you like black olives?! Here are some fun olive facts:

Did you know that Cal­i­for­nia olive grow­ers pro­duce more than 95 per­cent of the black ripe olives grown in the U.S.?! Crazy!  These grow­ers oper­ate multi-generational fam­ily farms from the inland val­leys of Cal­i­for­nia from San Diego County to far north of Sacra­mento County.

And, did you know that there is a whole site devoted to all these awe­some Cal­i­for­nia olives? You can get infor­ma­tion on recipes, his­tory, nutri­tion, and indus­try on www.CalOlive.org. Pretty cool, huh?!

- And, you can even “like” Cal­i­for­nia Black Ripe Olives on Face­book here.

What Hal­loween “fun foods” have you been making?

Linked to: *Eighteen25 Hal­loween Party, *Sun­dae Scoop, *Made by You Monday

Dis­clo­sure: The Cal­i­for­nia Olive Com­mit­tee pro­vided me with a pack­age of Halloween-themed good­ies and a gift card for my olive-creation sup­plies. My love of olives and fun foods are all my own!