reducing the halting problem to the blank tape problem
The reduction does not actually execute $M$, what its actually doing is the following mapping:

$\big(\langle M\rangle,w\big)\mapsto \langle M_w\rangle$

Where $M_w$ is the machine that when executed with blank tape, simulates the machine $M$ on input $w$. Preforming the reduction does not require that you execute $M$, you simply need to write down the code of $M_w$. Obviously $M$ halts on $w$ iff $M_w$ halts when executed with blank tape (we constructed $M_w$ specifically for this purpose), and the correctness of the reduction follows.