Halloween is my favorite holiday. Don’t get me wrong. I love Christmas, presents, the whole bit. I love Thanksgiving and the gluttony that goes with it. I love Valentine’s Day, Groundhog’s Day… really any reason to celebrate or have a special meal. But over the years, I developed a real taste for Halloween. Dressing up, oh yeah. I never grew out of it. I would bug my mom for months on end before Halloween, wondering WHAT CAN I BE THIS YEAR? I have dressed up for almost every Halloween in memory. And if I wasn’t concocting a costume, I was carving up a bajillion pumpkins, or cooking up a party to host.

Most people have food traditions to go with the major holidays. But when you are single and/or without children, you don’t have much call to develop a special Christmas morning breakfast, or come up with a “famous oyster dressing.” But Halloween, even as a single person, I could really sink my teeth into it. People don’t go away to spend it with their families, so even as a singlet, I was able to host some pretty fun All Hallow’s Eve dinners. I tried on several recipes as I searched for my Traditional Halloween Meal, including “ghoulash”, soup, roast beast, but none seemed to work out just right. Finally, I settled on country style ribs and scalloped potatoes, and have made the same meal for Halloween for several years running. The beauty of this meal is not only in the color scheme – somehow the brown and orange of it really appeals to me, nor is it just in the “hot, brown, and plenty of it” part of the deal – although that’s good before a night of trick or treating, or boozing on Mass Street. It’s in the simplicity and quickness with which I can create it, leaving me plenty of time to spend on some really awesomely disgustingly fun dessert.

This year, I won’t be doing any boozing on Mass Street, and my offspring is too wee for trick or treating, so I’ll be hosting a few friends who are also too old, tired, or tied to their offspring to whoop it up like the old days. We’ll eat the ribs and taters, and I might go so far as to throw together some sort of punch in a bowl with dry ice, just for fun. And I will present them with my friend Ames’ famous oozing scab cake. Yes, I said OOZING SCAB CAKE. I know you can’t wait to dive right in.

Ingredients:
1 yellow cake mix
green food coloring
1 can (or two, if you’re really gross) cherry pie filling
2 boxes vanilla pudding

milk
eggs
oil
(for making the cake and pudding)

1) Start with a yellow cake mix, and make the batter according to the directions, but add some green food coloring until you get it a good ghastly color.

2) Bake the cake in a greased and floured 9 x 13 pan, and let it cool completely. Remove it from the pan onto an aluminum foil covered piece of cardboard, or some other serving tray.

3) Then pull hunks off around the edges and a few out of the top. The deeper the hunks, the more ooey gooey good filling you can put in. You could also slash the top of the cake with a knife, as if Freddie Kruger’s fingernails had raked across it.

4) For blood, put cherries and the cherry syrup in around the perimeter of the holes, and add a few cherries inside for blood clots. If you are doing the large scratches, be sure to put plenty of lumpy “blood” inside and around those too.

5) Dollop some vanilla pudding on top of each bloody hole for the oozing scabby grossness. Spread it down the center of the “gashes”.

6) Serve with a toothless smile.

Your grown up, too-cool-for-kiddie-games-friends will love it. Even if they don’t admit it.

For more disgusting Halloween food creations, check out the book “Gross Grub” by Carol Porter. And let your foul imagination run wild. Release your inner vomiting pumpkin.