I recently ate lunch with a cousin who informed me that she has given away all of her Halloween decorations because her children are grown up. I cannot imagine doing this. In my opinion, we are all children on Halloween.
I adore Oct. 31. I never get trick-or-treaters at my remote Hawley home. I stopped stocking up on candy “just in case” more than a decade ago, realizing that I just ended up with candy in the house that I would then eat.
Nevertheless, I do try to do something special for this holiday. I have more decorations for Halloween than I do for any other holiday.
Early each October I relish unpacking my Halloween lights, wreaths and stuffed animals. I haul out the pumpkin and spider-web plates and tablecloths … and of course, my salad servers shaped like skeletal hands. The servers don’t work very well, but they are hugely entertaining.
I have always been a big fan of trick-or-treating. Never having quite attained a height of 5 feet, I went from door to door each Halloween into my college years.
I loved the thrill of dressing up as someone or something else for a night. And of course, I loved getting lots and lots of candy.
I was surprised a couple of decades ago when my mother told me she didn’t trick-or-treat on Halloween as a child; it wasn’t the standard American practice then that it is today. She did don a costume and go door to door on Thanksgiving when she visited her Aunt Charlotte in Jersey City, N.J., she informed me.
A post on the New York Public Library website confirmed that this practice was common in urban areas like Jersey City and New York. Librarian Carmen Nigro wrote:
“On Ragamuffin Day — which was Thanksgiving Day — children would dress themselves in rags and oversized, overdone parodies of beggars (à la Charlie Chaplin’s character ‘The Tramp’).
“The ragamuffins would then ask neighbors and adults on the street, ‘Anything for Thanksgiving?’ The usual response would be pennies, an apple or a piece of candy.”
According to a 2016 article in The New York Times, Ragamuffin Day began shortly after the Civil War.
“The costumes weren’t quite as colorful as the ones worn by today’s trick-or-treaters — there were no vampire or President Ulysses S. Grant ragamuffins — but the goal was the same: collecting as much swag as possible,” wrote reporter Tammy La Gorce.
“Though the earliest ragamuffins favored a hobo look, they eventually dressed as sailors, bandits and Disney characters. Sometime in the 1930s, ragamuffin begging gave way to ragamuffin parades, which, in many cases, were the forerunners of Thanksgiving Day parades.”
The New York Public Library and the Library of Congress both have black-and-white images of children dressed up for Thanksgiving and begging for pennies and goodies.
By the time I was a child, dressing up and going from door to door was reserved for Halloween. As an adult in more densely populated areas than Hawley, I threw myself into stocking up on candy, putting on my witch hat and answering the door to assorted witches, ghosts, princesses, superheroes and gangsters.
My late dog, Truffle, adored children and consequently found Halloween magical. One year she actually dressed up (to be strictly accurate, I dressed her up) as a pumpkin and went trick-or-treating with my nephew, Michael.
I enjoyed creating home-made treats to hand out. I remember being excited when I received a neighbor’s popcorn balls as a child, and I wanted to share that thrill with my young neighbors as an adult.
I knew that some parents prefer purchased, pre-packaged treats in light of ongoing (but not necessarily substantiated) rumors of sabotaged Halloween candy over the years.
I developed a simple fix for this problem. Every year, I receive labels displaying my name and address from charities to which I contribute. I affixed a label to each wrapped homemade treat. That way, if parents or children had questions about the ingredients, they could contact me.
My handcrafted treats varied. Sometimes I made fudge. Sometimes I made popcorn balls or candied popcorn. Sometimes I threw together simple rice-cereal-and-marshmallow treats festooned with black-and-orange candies.
One year, two young neighbors and their mother helped me prepare caramel apples. I don’t recommend these as wholesale treats; they are expensive, rich and time-consuming. Nevertheless, they make a wonderful gift for a select few ragamuffins.
Here is our recipe. When my small friends and I dipped our apples, we got carried away and copied the elegant apples available in gourmet shops by adding chocolate and sprinkles. By the time the children sat down to try a slice of decorated apple, they were ecstatic … and very sticky.
Ingredients:
¾ pound caramel (or as much as you like) in block or unwrapped form
A small amount of cream if needed
4 medium apples
4 sticks for dipping and eating
⅓ pound milk chocolate, cut up
⅓ pound white chocolate, cut up
Festive seasonal sprinkles, chopped nuts or any other topping you like (optional)
Preheat the oven to 200 degrees, and bring water to a boil in the bottom of a double boiler. Place the caramel in the top of the double boiler, and place the milk chocolate and white chocolate in oven-proof bowls.
If your caramel needs it (the package should tell you), add a little cream to it. (I used a caramel block from King Arthur Baking, which didn’t need the cream, but many commercial caramels are harder and require the extra liquid and richness.)
Melt the caramel in the double boiler over low heat, stirring occasionally. While it is melting, put sticks in the cores of the apples.
When the caramel has melted, place the bowls of chocolate in the oven. Dip the apples in the caramel, gently swirling to cover them. Place the dipped apples on a cookie sheet lined with parchment paper or a silicone mat. Let them cool a bit.
Take the chocolates out of the oven and stir to confirm that they have melted. (Melting them takes 10 to 15 minutes in the oven.) Use a spoon to drizzle the chocolate over the apples.
If you wish for extra bling, throw a few sprinkles or nuts on top of the apples before the chocolate hardens. Then wait for it to harden before digging in. (Waiting is the hard part!) Makes four delicious apples. These are best consumed cut into segments as they are very filling.
Tinky Weisblat is the award-winning author of “The Pudding Hollow Cookbook,” “Pulling Taffy,” and “Love, Laughter, and Rhubarb.” Visit her website, TinkyCooks.com.