Deviled Eyeballs

Deviled Eyeballs are eerie deviled egg appetizers with a pesto filling and are perfect for the Halloween season and parties.

Deviled Eyeballs

By Sue Lau | Palatable Pastime

I had been thinking of what kind of Halloween recipes to make one afternoon not too long ago while I was in the kitchen putting together some pasta-with-pesto when I looked down at the yummy green stuff and it suddenly hit me how monstrous a color it was. It evoked images of the creature from the black lagoon, crocodiles and little green men with little beady eyes with a devilish red glow. Yep. That’s the schtuff.

I’d also made one of those skinless skull meatloaves recently covered with a bloodyish tomato sauce that was just too ghoulish to post. I wanted something a little more toned down, but still evil. So I imagined the whites of a hard cooked egg being like the whites of eyes, filled with evilgreen, and what better with the Italian flavor of pesto than a bit of olive? But green Sicilian olives, while having the requisite red center, were quite tasty, I wanted something a little more stark. So I went for the black olives. And with a wicked squirt of sriracha in the center, they have a sinister feel. As for that meat loaf, maybe next year. It needs to strike that perfect balance between delicious-and-nauseous and it isn’t quite there. Right now it is very evil, but also very yuck. Taste was good though. I can make a decent meatloaf and in the time I’ve worked as a professional cook, I made a boatload of those.

But there’s not much else to say about these, unless you want to squiggle sriracha to give it a bloodshot look, although personally, I thought the tip of the sriracha bottle made those too big. Maybe you could apply it with a toothpick. I thought these looked funny enough as they are, and should be an easy and fun choice for your Halloween party.

This is *almost* the last of my Halloween recipes. I have one more for certain and possibly another, but if I don’t get a move on, I won’t have that post finished in time. This post was already meant to go up yesterday, but my apple molasses went up late and I really needed to get that one up to support upcoming recipes that go with it. I have one other recipe for Sunday using leftover Halloween candy for the #SundaySupper group. You *could* use it as a Halloween recipe, but it’s really meant for after, when suddenly everyone is hellbent to ditch all the sweets. Hopefully you will see all three of these over the next few days. So until next time-

~Sue

Deviled Eyeballs

Servings: 10
Time: 25mins
Difficulty: easy
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Ingredients:

5 hard-cooked eggs
4 tablespoons mayonnaise
4 tablespoons basil pesto
8 drops green food coloring (optional)
salt and black pepper to taste
10 slices ripe pitted black olives
sriracha sauce (as needed)

Method:

Peel eggs, cut in half and place egg yolks in a small food processor along with mayo, pesto, food coloring, salt, and black pepper.
Puree filling until smooth.
Fill egg cavities with pesto filling.
Garnish each egg with a slice of black olive, filling the center with a dot of sriracha.
Use any remaining filling as a cracker dip if desired.

From the haunted kitchen of palatablepastime.com