Pizza Roll Graveyard

There are a lot of good Halloween centerpieces out there, but few you’d actually want to eat.

I mean, sure, mist billowing out of a well-carved pumpkin looks impressive, but all you’re left with is dried out squash and a couple of burns from the dry ice. You need something vaguely creepy, vaguely easy, and, most importantly, very tasty. Stuffing lychees with blueberries to make delicately tropical eyeballs might work, however, these are a little more appealing to the adult partygoers than the kiddos.

Enter the Pizza Roll Graveyard.

It’s easy: slide Totino’s pizza rolls and slices of pepperoni into your preheated, 425 degree oven. After three minutes, remove the pepperoni; after a full nine, remove the pizza rolls.

Cut just the very end off of as many rolls as you’d like gravestones, and set cut side down in a spooky blood-red field of marinara.  (Reserve the rest of the pizza rolls for serving . . . )

Meanwhile, make your frico “ghosts”.  (Frico is a baked grated cheese crisp -  you probably last had frico as a fancy garnish on a Caesar salad.)  To make the frico, spread finely grated parmesan into clumps about ¼ inch thick on a silpat, or a non-stick (and I mean really non-stick) baking sheet.

Pop into the oven until the clumps have melted and are just turning brown at the edges. Remove a piece of the frico from pan (or silpat) with a spatula and, working quickly, use a small ghost-shaped cookie cutter to form your ghosts. “Quickly” is the key here, and small batches as well!  The shapes must be cut while the cheese is still warm and pliable, or else the frico will shatter— but not to worry, if things cool down you can just slide the pan back into the oven briefly to warm the cheese for the next go.  To form a stand for each little frico ghost, cut a slit in the rounded end of half a cherry tomato.

After that, it’s all cosmetics. Spread a little tapenade in front of the pizza rolls to make the freshly dug graves, lay out your pepperoni with some parmesan to make a suitably winding, spooky path, and set up your frico ghosts.

Add few sprigs of parsley (even the most barren cemeteries need some greenery), the bowl of remaining pizza rolls for dipping, and you’re set!

Happy Halloween!  Cheers, Michelle!

Michelle Palm created the Jelly Shot Test Kitchen blog after discovering a lack of cocktail-style jelly shot recipes. Look for her posts here, and check her Tablespoon member profile often to see what she’s already gelled up!