Halloween candy

TRICK-OR-TREAT  is the well-known mantra of ghouls and goblins that show up on your doorstep on Halloween night. The sometimes hostile supernatural forces and the ghosts and spirits of the dead are supposedly free to wander as they wish, as they walk on the thin line separating them on this scary night. Over the course of centuries, the present-day custom of trick-or-treating was born out of such superstition. Is it only that, or did our ancestors know something we've forgotten?

GIVING TREATS  to the tricksters, according to Halloween lore is said to appease the wandering spirits and keep them from doing dastardly deeds to your property (or flock, as it were). Wearing masks and other disguises are meant to confuse the spirits roaming amongst us.

AS A KID, I remember roaming around the neighborhood with a gaggle of friends, going unsupervised to neighbors homes (after a certain age) where we would find homemade fudge, popcorn balls and other treats carefully packaged in paper treat bags printed in black and orange. Of course the trickster tradition of papering (or rolling) someone's yard was great fun also (usually friends or teachers)! The freedom of these innocent times has been curtailed these days with more supervision since the trickster spirits seemed to have taken hold of the holiday. Maybe it's only because—more often than not—the treats aren't as carefully considered and made with love.

IT HAS BEEN  quite a trick to create the images of this post, but I had a lot of fun doing it, so I'm going to let them speak for themselves and not be as long-winded as usual. The large ornaments on the tree above were hand-cut and crafted in New England and sold in the online Stromboli's Wagon store on Ebay. Inspired by vintage imagery and beautifully finished in paint and glitter, it's obvious they were made with love and care. The Jack-O-Lantern metal bell ornaments are from Pier 1 Imports—in three sizes, they lend a great compositional depth in decorating this glittery tree cutout. It all sits atop a gothic-style wooden table.

SHE COULD very well be the Queen of Halloween — my always supportive and inspiring blog friend, folk artist Johanna Parker — created some wonderful Halloween hangers this year that I've added to my collection (from her commercially available collections, available here, here and here). I told her they might just become my holiday totems! In describing her thought process in making these spooky-fun creations, Johanna says "When designing these fun hangers, my intentions were to add a little more movement to my holiday product line. Typically, my Halloween characters are fashioned for the shelf, mantel or table top, so the thought occurred to me to add a little kinetics to the mix. Double-sided hangers came to mind and naturally all things that haunt us from the skies popped in my imagination. I absolutely love owls, bats truly fascinate me, and well, Mr. Moon is certainly a key player in setting the spooky mood!" Inspired by her collections of vintage holiday novelties, Johanna admits that her favorite subject matter is Halloween. And why not? Her birthday also falls on October 31st. Happy birthday Johanna!

AND SINCE cats are my favorite animal associated with Halloween (actually my favorite animal, period), I've created a simple cat tree this year. It seems that Halloween is rivaling Christmas in popularity everywhere. It's no mystery that according to History.com that one quarter of all the candy sold annually in the U.S. is purchased for Halloween. Let's hope that's enough to keep us safe from the evil trickster spirits for at least another year.

GOTHIC GLAM | (Top) This glittery tree stands in contrast to the blue backdrop painted with Martha Stewart Living paint in azurite from Home Depot. It is decorated with glittered vintage-inspired ornaments from Stromboli's Wagon and Jack-O-Lantern metal bell ornaments in three sizes from Pier 1 Imports. Altogether they form a vintage Halloween look. Since the bells ring, does that mean the spirits get their wings? 

GLITTERY RETRO | (Above, left) The handcrafted ornaments were hand-cut and crafted in New England and sold in the online Stromboli's Wagon store on Ebay. Inspired by vintage imagery and beautifully finished, it's obvious they were made with love and care. 

HALLOWEEN HANGERS | (Above, right) I couldn't resist these Halloween owl, moon and bat hangers designed by my blog friend Johanna Parker (left, in her Halloween finery). Oversized and double-sided painted papier-mâché ornaments of this size certainly set a spooky-fun scene for a tableau like this. I purchased these folk-art finds from blog friend Debbie Buchanan's online store at Bayberry Cove.

CATS IN HATS | (Bottom) These black cat ornaments in orange hats from Pier 1 Imports are a simple trick for this coated wire tree from IKEA. The multi-colored bumpy glass ornaments are from a past Martha Stewart Kmart collection. The cat/costumed folk-art figures were lent from a friend's private collection, all placed atop a sparkly beaded spider placemat from this year's Halloween collection from Target. 

©2010 DARRYL MOLAND | ALL RIGHTS RESERVED 

photography, collecting and styling by Darryl Moland

valentine tree of hearts

A FAR CRY from making lackluster cakes in my childhood neighbor's Easy-Bake Oven, the chemistry of seeing flour and sugar and other ingredients morph into a baked confection was our first exercise in creating for ourselves what our mothers and grandmothers so deftly concocted with expert confidence. There is nothing else like cookies, cakes and pies. Sometimes, I wonder if we shouldn't just have dessert first, instead of saving room for it as an afterthought. It's no wonder Valentine's day has become a day to give sweets to loved ones.

MY MOTHER,  a consummate homemaker, was seemingly always in the kitchen cooking, canning something from the garden, or washing dishes. She always preferred to make cakes and pies over cookies. A good Southerner wasn't worth their salt if they couldn't bake a decent cake or lighter-than-air biscuits. It's not that way anymore. I think she liked to bake cakes best because of their scene-stealing grandiosity. Biscuits with butter and homemade preserves or with peppery milk gravy are another story altogether. Maybe growing up surrounded by cakes is the reason I obsessively collect cake plates, just as sweet memories of the holidays drive collecting the ornaments which are the raw material for this blog. Growing up in the American South, there were always cake walks, birthday cakes, fruitcakes, and even pancakes and potato cakes. This would sometimes coalesce across the community with fundraiser bake sales full of homemade goodness. Who could resist contributing to a cause that way?

EVERY YEAR  at Christmastime, I remember going out to the back porch to drive nails into the eyes of a fresh coconut, drain the milk into a glass, and crack the shell with a hammer. I would bring it to mother in the kitchen and we would peel off the thin outer layer of the slightly sweet meat. She would grate the coconut, toss it with confectioners sugar and press it into the the icing of the tallest layered cake she could make that would stand upright, even if it was held together inside with toothpicks. It was always quite a sweet spectacle and was the first thing everyone in the family would devour from a counter laden with other treats like pecan pies, a wine-soaked fruitcake, date-nut rolls, and even a competing German-chocolate cake. Nothing else seemed to compare to that stately white beauty layered and dressed in fresh coconut. It was mouth-watering deliciousness.

A VALENTINE TREE  (above) began with the idea for a tree full of hearts of one sort or another. An Easy-Bake light bulb went off and cookies came to mind. Immediately, I thought of my friends Brandon and John and their venture in becoming professional bakers. They agreed to collaborate with me by baking the cookies along with my initiation to the art of decorating them. We decorated the cookies they baked with colored icing, nonpareils and several types of brightly-colored sugars. The result of our combined creative efforts hang on the tree created from a tree branch painted white and glued at the tips with vintage paper leaves — all directing their attention with curve of the branch. I wanted the tree to match the ethereal and magical fairy-dust quality of Bear Maker Bakery cookies, along with the absolute exuberance and passion Brandon and John show in their baking efforts.

THEY TOO discovered baking in their respective childhood Easy-Bake Ovens, and they never forgot the power of a homemade confection. After they found each other, they ventured out on a limb together with a dream and a goal of making the most delicious cookies possible. While growing their passion for baking into a full-time creative endeavor, they jointly set out (even with separate childhood memories of providing treats for their families and friends) to create cookies "too beautiful to eat," but at the same time delicious enough to make resistance futile! It's not often that decorated cookies taste as good as they look. Labored over in their spare hours with love and care, their attention to flavor and texture along with a keen sense of visual detail has begun paying off. Like a fairy sighting, if you blink, their cookies might disappear. Even in reminding yourself of a growing waistline, if you are to truly enjoy any treat for what it is, both Brandon and John understand that sweetness and goodness in baking always shoot straight for the heart.

CHILDHOOD experimentation with Easy-Bake Ovens may have served as a starting point, but my friends at Bear Maker Bakery have gone way beyond those formative days to perfect their craft by coming up with unexpected ways to combine the right ingredients in making something that is beyond the ordinary. They haven't reached the point of quitting their day jobs either, so it is truly a labor of love [like The Decorated Tree (of life)]. All it takes is a loving tenacity of spirit to begin to realize the sweetest dreams.

TREE OF HEARTS | This Valentine cookie tree (above), made from a painted branch with handmade vintage paper leaves is decorated with cookies (above, right) made in collaboration with Bear Maker Bakery. The Valentine candy boxes by Johanna Parker and "Be Mine Cat Boy" original design spun cotton figure by Crystal Hanehan (left) are from Bayberry Cove (he was hand spun using techniques similar to those of the early German artisans who created cotton ornaments for Christmas). The German glass glitter lovebird ornaments perched in the branch are from Pottery Barn. The ceramic urn holding the branch is from Smith and Hawken. The cake plate from my collection is the Martha Stewart Limited Edition 2009 Cake Plate from Macy's. A cardboard heart box from Michaels is painted chartreuse and sits behind a silver-beaded pocket holding a heart love token (from Bombay Duck London) at the base of the tree. 

COOKIE COLLABORATION | (Right) Brandon Tidwell (top, left and middle) and John Price (top left, top right, and bottom left) from Bear Maker Bakery were gracious (and elfin) enough to put their hearts into cookies for the tree, along with giving me lessons on decorating them (that's me, bottom right, grinning with childlike glee).
 
©2010 DARRYL MOLAND | ALL RIGHTS RESERVED, collecting and styling by Darryl Moland, tree photographed by Harold Daniels Studio / assisted by Shawn May, cookie making collage photos by Darryl Moland and Brandon Tidwell