Halloween-iversary

This Saturday was our 9th wedding anniversary. Usually, we do something for our anniversary and Halloween separately but this year we decided to combine the two and have a haunted house dinner party. We love playing Betrayal at the House on the Hill and the expansion was released just a few weeks before our anniversary so it was a perfect excuse to buy it for ourselves.

We were limited in the number of people we invited by the number of players for the game. That allowed me to make the invitations more elaborate because I only had to make a few. I decide to make spell books that had been found in the house with the party information on one of the pages.

I downloaded a printable spell book cover and gray pattern for endpapers. I also did a google image search to find pictures to use as spell pages. The center of the book has all of the details about the party and the front cover has a post-it note connecting it to the imaginary house on the hill.

Our dog Gil grabbed one of them off of the table and chewed up a corner, right before we were going to give them out. I didn't have time to get another one made but luckily it kind of worked with the old book idea. (It also didn't hurt that everyone invited has dogs and would be understanding.)

For dinner, we made spooky tentacle pasta with meat sauce, a simple salad, and breadsticks. The spaghetti is dye by using a bit of gel food coloring in the cooking water.

 

Dessert was turtle brownies and sweet cream ice cream with a delicious blood orange and blackberry sauce that my husband made which turned out a wonderful blood red color.

Our round of Betrayal was great. I headed to the library beforehand to 3D print an organizer for the game pieces. I ended up only having time to print one-half of it but it made everything run a little smoother. It also satisfies that part of me that loves organizing and making rainbows, a nice little rainbow of betrayal.

                         

We ended up being shrunk and trapped in the house with cats trying to eat us. The survivors managed a narrow escape by toy airplane, barely winning the game before being eaten. Wr did lose some people but made it out with barely enough to meet our win conditions

The haunt that we played came from the original game but we enjoyed the new rooms and cards from the Widow's walk expansion. I also liked the addition of the explorer tokens which are used to mark which explorers have taken advantage of 'once per game' room bonuses.

Pina Colada Triffle

My husband loves to cook and for years complained that, although he got lots of complements, none of his co-workers believed he actually made his potluck offerings. Thankfully that changed when he switched to his current job about 2 years ago. He constantly has people asking for his recipes. The funny part is that he loves to experiment and usually can't remember exact measurements.

He is know for making delicious trifle style desserts and today I'm going to share how he makes them. If you scroll down a bit you'll see how we made a Pina Colada Trifle for his potluck at work today but first I want to talk a bit about choosing flavors. Even though the trifles we make follow a basic formula there is still a lot of experimentation with the flavors; you'll be able to use the method below to make a variety of desserts. Basically you need to choose 3 flavors: a cake flavor, a pudding flavor, and a fruit/ topping flavor. For example we made a trifle for Thanksgiving once that used spice cake, pumpkin pie pudding, and oatmeal nut crumble topping. Another example used homemade chocolate sour cream cake, cheesecake flavored pudding, and cherry topping.

Moving on to the recipe you have the same three components listed above and the assembly. Pictured below is everything you need to make our Pina Colada Trifle.

Step One: Cake

This can be as simple or complicated as you want it to be. Generally we use boxed cake mix but you could make it from scratch or even buy a premade angel food cake from the grocery store bakery. For this particular trifle we used white cake mix but replaced the water called for with the juice from two cans of crushed pineapple and a bit of coconut rum.

Step Two: Pudding

To make the pudding layer you need a box of instant pudding mix, a package of cream cheese, and a tub of whipped topping. Whip the pudding mix and cream cheese together using either a hand mixer or a stand mixer. Add a little bit of milk if needed to make it nice and fluffy. Then fold in half of the whipped topping with a spatula. This recipe used coconut cream pudding.

Step Three: Topping

This will vary depending on what flavors you decided to go with. Mostly we have used fruit topping but we've also used nut and oat streusel, caramel sauce, and hot fudge. Fruit topping can be fresh fruit, fruit that you cook down so it has a little syrup, or even just canned pie filling. This trifle uses canned crushed pineapple.

Step Four: Assembly

To assemble your dessert just layer everything. We are very lucky to have round cake pans that fit into our trifle dish with minimum trimming. If you aren't as fortunate just cut the cake into squares and create a layer of cubes on the bottom layer. Top that off with half the pudding and then half the fruit. Repeat all the layers and finish with the remaining whipped topping and garnish as desired. We topped this with both regular and toasted coconut.