Crescent Roll Witch Hats

Hop on your broom and fly to the kitchen to cook up these Crescent Roll Witch Hats! They’re so simple to make and make an amazing appetizer for your spooky party!

Yippee – Halloween is less than a month away.  We always try to decide our party theme for the next year’s party before all the props and decorations go on clearance, so we can get really great buys. So last October we decided this year’s party theme would involve witches, wizards, and all stuff magical. For the past few months, my husband and I have been throwing around decor and entertainment ideas, but just hadn’t settled on anything.

We usually have it all figured out by the end of summer and are moving along on our projects. This year, we just couldn’t get it together – until this weekend. Our decorating design has been formulated, our entertainment booked (a tarot reader,) our games and activities planned, and the food, well, that’s the easy part. I already have a chapter in Hungry Halloween featuring Movie Monster Munchies, Bewitched Buffet, and Dead Man’s Diner  filled with great witch themed cuisine, so all I have to do is expand on that menu a little and I’ll be ready for our big event.

I will definitely be making my Cackling Crackers and Full Moon Dip, as well as, the Black Cat Cheese Ball and am wanting to create a few more savory items.  Over the years, I have seen plenty of witch hat treats for Halloween, but most involved topping some sort of cookie with an ice cream cone. I love the idea, but didn’t want my witches hats to be sweet, so I had to create something new.

I really didn’t have to think very hard about this one.  One of my favorite recipe posts from this blog featured carrots made out of Pillsbury Crescent Creations Dough Sheets. It is one of my most popular posts. So I decided to re-purpose the recipe for Halloween.

I decided to keep the cone part of my hats flat, as opposed to the bumpy look of my carrots. The hats were pretty easy to shape using cream horn forms and a round cookie cutter – the only question was how to turn them black. I tried a few things and found my favorite was a generous sprinkling of poppy seeds all over the hats.  Black sesame seeds would work too. I filled my hats with pesto chicken salad, only because I had just spent the day before making 12 batches of pesto, using up a nice amount of my lovely home grown basil.  You could fill the hats with any kind of chicken salad, ham salad, seafood salad, flavored cream cheese, nut butter, spinach/artichoke dip, cheese spread, etc. If you prefer, for a party, you could just serve the hats as a bread option alongside any of the fillings listed above or how about pulled pork or taco meat.  So many options for you to choose from and I’m sure you’ll have something wonderfully delicious to use.

Oh, and just so you know, I have not been compensated by Pillsbury for this post.  I just really like their crescent dough product for projects such as this.  Though, I’d sure love to see one of my recipes in their little Halloween recipe books at the checkout aisle someday:)

 

Witch Hat Appetizers (makes 5)

Ingredients:

witch hats:

a sprinkling of flour to dust work surface
1 tube Pillsbury Crescent Recipe Creations Crescent Seamless Dough Sheet
1 egg (whisked with 1 teaspoon of water to make an egg wash)
poppy seeds (1/4-1/3 cup)
5 long slices of cheese (white or orange, 1/2″-3/4″ wide by 6″ long)

filling:

pesto chicken salad
(2 cups of diced chicken breast, 1/3 cup pesto, 1/3 cup mayo mixed together)
OR tuna salad, shrimp salad, ham salad, lobster salad, crab salad, chicken salad,
turkey salad, cream cheese, nut butter, cheese spread, spinach/artichoke dip, etc.

Special Equipment Needed:

template -create it out of paper or card stock
pizza cutter or knife
3″ round cookie cutter
5 metal cream horn molds
pastry brush
parchment paper or foil
baking sheet

Instructions:

Dust your work surface very lightly with flour. Open and unroll the crescent dough.  Use your hands or a rolling pin to flatten out and even out the thickness of the dough, stretching it out a bit.  Use a piece of paper or card stock to make a template.  Draw a 4″ line.  Then create a triangle with two 3 3/4″ sides. Under the 4″ line create a curved area. Set the template on the dough and cut out 5 triangles using a pizza wheel or knife.  Then cut 5 circles using the 3″ round cookie cutter.

Lay out your triangles of dough. Set the seam of the cream horn mold along one straight edge of the triangle. Roll the cream horn form over bringing the dough with it until both straight edges of dough meet up.  Press the two edges of dough together, flattening it and smoothing it out so the seam wont puff when baked.

Place poppy seeds in a shallow dish (or lid.) Brush the cones of dough with egg wash then roll them in poppy seeds, being sure to completely cover the cone. If you have bare spots you may have to carefully drip on some more egg wash then press the poppy seeds onto the dough. Brush the rounds of dough on one side and all around the edge with egg wash. Set the egg washed side of the dough into the poppy seeds and press gently. Then be sure to press poppy seeds all around the edge of the dough as well.

Line a baking sheet with parchment paper.

Set poppy seed covered cones on baking sheet, seam side down. I left one (pictured in the middle above) with the seam side up, just to see what would happen, and it didn’t split open, thankfully, but when I put the seam in the back when I made the hat, the hat looked flat instead of round.

Place at least one of the poppy seed rounds with the dough facing up, so that you can easily see how the dough is browning in the oven.  Set the others any way you like on the baking sheet.  Refrigerate for 20-30 minutes.

Pre-heat oven to 400 degrees Fahrenheit.  Bake for 6-8 minutes until deep golden brown.

Depending on how the dough baked, your cones may not sit perfectly straight on the rounds (see the first hat on the left which is leaning – it needs trimmed), so use kitchen shears or a knife to level off the bottoms of each cone.

Carefully fill each cone with your savory filling (I used pesto chicken salad.)  Set each cone down in the center of a round.  Cut thin slices of cheese into 1/2″-3/4″ wide by 6″ long strips.  Wrap one strip of cheese around the base of each cone.  Press the two edges of the cheese together gently.  They are ready to serve.  If you are making more than 5 hats, be sure to clean your cream horn forms before repeating the process to make more hats.

You can refrigerate your hats for a few hours or up to a few days, depending on the filling.  Mine kept well for several days – the hats didn’t get soggy at all.  If your filling is a bit wet, then you might not want them sitting around for more than a few hours. I think those filled with a cream cheese or cheese spread would also keep for several days. I was happy with how these hats looked, but do think they could have had a few embellishments.  If you make them, you might want to add a buckle using orange cheese. To give the actual hat more character, you could allow the tip of the cone to bend over.  Just form the triangle of dough on the cream horn mold allowing the very top point to hang over. After you cover it in poppy seeds, bend the tip over and set on your baking sheet. Add whatever you’d like or keep them as is.

I will be making these for my Halloween party this year and will be sure to take some pictures. Hope you will too.

Be sure to check out all the Halloween recipes here on Hungry Happenings.