Planning a Halloween party appetizer just got simpler.🎃 Did you know Stop & Shop carries unique Halloween themed cheeses? I am going to show you how to make a delectable Halloween Cheese Plate that is sure to be a crowd pleaser! 

Cheese plates are fun because you can use a variety of tasty foods. You can include cheese, crackers, meats, nuts, fruits, olives, spreads, etc.. For mine I used 4 cheeses, black raspberries, salami, crackers and a fig spread. For a special spooky touch I made edible cockroaches using pitted dates stuffed with cream cheese and slivers of green onion as the antenna. For a ghoulish embellishment I also made eyeballs using red turnips and olives. 

Here are the four Halloween themed cheese you can find at Stop & Shop! 

It looks like a brain!

I mean this one just screams Halloween. 

Garlic keeps vampires away and tastes delicious!

Stop & Shop makes party planning so easy. Who doesn't love cheese? 

I am a HUGE fan of the Halloween film Hocus Pocus. To celebrate the 25th Anniversary of the film I decided to make the iconic Spell Book seen in the film  into a cake! You will see so many  versions of this on the internet but I swear mine is the easiest. No fondant required! 

You will need:
-2 rectangle 13X9 baked chocolate cake
-Chocolate frosting
-White frosting
-Black frosting
-Black and white candy melts
-Gummy eyeball(Purchased mine from Walmart)

Directions:
Stack the cooled baked rectangle chocolate cake on a board/tray with chocolate frosting in between the layers. Then  frost the entire cake with chocolate frosting. Put some white frosting in a pipette bag and frost lines on 3 sides of the cake to be the pages of the Spell Book. 

Now it is time to start decorating and making the embellishments. Melt the white and black candy melts according to the directions. Then place into a pipette bag and pipe a long snake shape and some small coiled snake shapes like how you see on the book onto some wax paper and allow to firm. I also did the metal latch/buckle you see around the eye.  I used the image below as reference when I made my cake. 

Make some gray frosting(mix the white and the black) and pipe a long rectangle on the front side of the book. Then place your long snake you made out of candy melts on top of that. Place the gummy eyeball on the other side and place your round candy melt buckle piece around that. Then on opposite ends of the eyeball place your candy melt snake embellishments. 

Next pipe lines with the black frosting of where the stitch work is on the spell book. Mix some of the chocolate and white frosting to create a light brown color and draw small lines as stitches over the black lines you drew. 

With just some  frosting and creativity  you can easily make a Hocus Pocus Spell Book Cake at home! 

Enjoy and Happy Halloween!!