Happy Girl's and Ghoul's Day!

March 3rd is Girl's Day in Japan, and we've celebrated it every year since Emily was born, usually by going to Mitsuwa in NJ and having lots of food and fun. This year we had a special guest girl to celebrate with us (and we let our boys come as well) and I think it was the best one yet -- in no small part because we also celebrated Ghoul's Day that evening! Girl's Day is also the Doll Festival and all three of us are huge Monster High fans -- so Emily had the idea to have a spooky doll-related party as a surprise for everyone. We made everything a day or two ahead of time and hid it, and after resting up from our day out on the 3rd we had some spooky fun. The highlight, of course, was the food:

Ghoul's Day party food!

We made the official drink of Monster High, Ghoulia's Ghoul Juice -- it's a recipe you can win on the website by playing a game (or just look up online). Looking at the directions, I realized it was just lemonade with food coloring added, and a bit of baking soda thrown in for fizz. So I just used our normal lemonade recipe and colored it bright green. No gummy eyeballs were to be found in March, so we just used maraschino cherries -- and skipped the fizzy baking soda part.

Ghoulia's Ghoul Juice (a.k.a. bright green lemonade)

Bloody Oreos were next on our list -- originally I meant to use some leftover red candy melts, but they never really melted (and to be honest, I think that stuff is gross). We were almost out of time but I found a recipe for a glaze that worked perfectly (1/3 c butter, 2 c powdered sugar, 2 t vanilla and 2-4 t hot water -- melt butter, add everything else and whisk until smooth). We colored it bright red and drizzled it on our cookies and came up with this:

oreos dripping with vanilla sugar blood

Seriously cool, and tasty as well! But the coolest looking snack had to be our Brain Puffs, based on a snack that the zombie girl, Ghoulia, has in her slumber party version. Emily thinks that popcorn looks a lot like brains, and I vaguely remembered saving a clipping from a 1960s magazine for making colored popcorn. I never did find the clipping, but luckily I remembered jello was involved and it turns out jello popcorn is a well known classic snack. I used cherry jello and this recipe, made human-sized boxes and we filled them with our Brain Puffs!

BRAAAAAIIIIIIINS!!!!

I have to admit, the candied popcorn was a little sweet for us. It does keep well, but with a box of bloody oreos in the house to go for instead it didn't really have a chance. And without the box, the spookiness is pretty much lost. But the bloody oreos and ghoul juice will definitely be coming back for Halloween!