Severed Foot Cheeseball

I love Halloween, it's probably my favourite holiday of all.It gives me a chance to be creative in a gruesome way that is only acceptable this time of year! One of my best creations, in my opinion, is the Severed Foot Cheeseball. It's a Sherylyn original, conceived of in a moment of macabre brilliance, lol. The cheeseball recipe comes from my mom, and we have made versions of it for as long as I can remember. For Christmas we'd decorate them with red-pepper poinsettias, in summer they'd have carrot and radish blossoms on chive stems. But in my opinion, this Halloween version takes it to a whole. New. Level.



Severed Foot Cheeseball

The cheeseball mixture:
2 blocks reduced-fat cream cheese (NOT fat free)
1 cup grated sharp cheddar (I use reduced-fat for that as well)
1/2 cup finely grated Swiss cheese (or asiago or parmesan, anything really sharp)
1.5 cups chopped ham (I used black forest for that touch of black in the mix)
1/2 cup chopped olives with pimentos
2 cloves garlic, crushed
1 Tbsp Worchestershire sauce
generous amount of freshly ground black pepper
2 or 3 drops of green food colouring

Reserve 1 Tbsp of the cream cheese for decorating. Throw all the rest of the ingredients in a bowl and mix well (easiest in a stand mixer if you are a wimp...otherwise a little elbow grease should do it!)and add green food colouring until desired pale green mouldy shade is reached. Shape into a foot-like blob and chill until firm (overnight is best).

Decorating:
1 mushroom stem
1/2 red pepper, chopped into a macerated mess
5 black olive halves
reserved 1 Tbsp cream cheese tinted pale blue for veins

Using a butter knife, shape the blob into a nice foot-like shape (should be easier now that the cheese is stiffer). Use your own foot as inspiration, or ask someone to be a foot model for you. You will want a foot and ankle so that you have a bit of a leg stump to decorate.

Once you are happy with your foot shape, pile the red pepper mush onto the stump. Jam in the mushroom stem, and then form the red pepper mush around the bottom of it.

Use the black olive halves for toenails (I trimmed down the four smaller toenails for a more realistic look).

Using a toothpick, drag the blue cream cheese across the top of the foot in a veiny pattern (examine your foot model!)

That should do it. Gruesome AND delicious, the perfect combo! I served this at work for a Halloween Potluck and did another for my Halloween-edition book club meeting, along with mummy fingers (spiced ground lamb wrapped in phyllo shreds served with sweet chili sauce), fruit decorated with insects, banana cupcakes with peanut butter frosting, and lots of red wine.

Here is a picture of my fabulous book club ladies in their literary-inspired costumes! We had a Nancy Drew, a Zorro, a Mad Hatter, and a John Steinbeck...can you pick them out? I was Sylvia Plath, it was a great deal of fun and I was really impressed with everyone's participation...it's a shame you can't see more of the room, it looked very spooky with the candles, cobwebs, window ghosts, pumpkin lights, and other Halloween decorations, along with the Rob Zombie movie "Devil's Rejects" muted in the background and Halloween-themed CDs I put together with songs like Bahaus's Bela Lugosi's Dead, Alice Cooper's I Love the Dead, Rob Zombie's American Witch, White Stripes' Little Ghost, etc. I was so proud.