Crying for Candy Corns

So I am a little homesick this month. October is probably my very favorite month in Utah—not just because of Halloween and all the cute decorations and costumes, but because the weather turns cool but not too cold yet, there’s fall break from school, which teachers love as much as students do, and there are so many fun things to do with your family. Each year we like to see the witches at Gardener Village, and have hot chocolate and a donut at the bakery there; we always go to Cornbelly’s at Thanksgiving Point; we also always go to Heehaw’ s in Pleasant Grove where there’s a haunted hayride. We also always drive the Alpine loop, which is breathtaking in the fall.

My experience so far is that in France, Halloween is a very scaled down affair. At the grocery store (like Walmart) where they have two aisles of yogurt, they had about ¼ of an aisle of Halloween stuff—all of it was pretty lame too. There were a handful of kids’ costumes (mostly of the scary variety), but that’s about it. Sigh.

My girls are having a Halloween party though at their British school. I got assigned to bring a baked good. I have decided to make cookies shaped like Halloween cats. I got the idea from my sister’s friend’s blog called “Small and Simple Things.” (It’s the cutest blog with so many ideas for holidays, and I have loved her posts on Halloween ideas this month. The author is Kim McCrary, and there is a link to her blog if you scroll down on my blog list.) This recipe is darling, and the cookies are supposed to look like this when they are done:

Obviously the recipe calls for candy corns. Do you think I could find candy corns in France? I even asked some British teachers at the school if they knew where I could get some after I had looked everywhere. After I described what they were, one teacher said, “I don’t know what those are; we definitely don’t have those in England either.” Whoa. If Mother England doesn’t have candy corns, I might as well give up trying to find them in France. Extra long sigh.

So I decided to improvise. I made a trial batch of the cookies today with Jenica and Jocelyn’s help. They taste great and turned out really cute, but they just aren’t the same without candy corn eyes. I used a rectangular chewy candy that I cut diagonally to make two triangles for the eyes. We can’t get red hots here either for the nose, like the recipe calls for, so I used skittles that my friend brought when she visited instead.

I’ll let you know how the actual holiday of Halloween goes, but I’m not expecting much.  How can a country that doesn’t even sell candy corns know how to properly celebrate this holiday?  Hasn’t anyone in this country ever been to California Adventure in October? Here's to reminiscing:

Disneyland in October 2007.  Maisy was just 3 months and the twins are 3.