**Party photos added at the bottom of the story**

Those that know me know that I adore the macabre and ghoulish. I’ll sign up for anything vaguely creepy and Halloween, although barely registering a blip here in Australia, is a holiday I gladly celebrate. I think that for the months of October-December I’d like to be American because of the 3 holidays: Halloween, Thanksgiving and Christmas. OK we celebrate Christmas but we miss out of the other two.

In October I received my Dexter Season 2 DVD and in the set came a tshirt and an evidence pack complete with Crime Scene tape, you know the stuff that they use on US TV to cordon off a crime scene. No matter that the police tape here is reportedly blue and white. I was evilly fondling my precious length of Crime Scene tape, wondering who to play a trick on when I realised that Halloween was coming up and it was a most fitting decoration. I set to work on my invitations, based on the Friday the 13th Cupcakes I made earlier this year and emailed them out to my nearest and dearest.

Eyeball and Tarantula Spider cupcakes (recipe for Eyeball cupcakes here, Tarantula cupcake recipe see below)

For the three weeks leading up to Halloween, I scoured websites looking for Halloween themed decorations. The food was easy, I had a list of things I had been dying to make. Apart from the Crime Scene tape which would greet everyone at the front door, I knew to make it a truly fantastic Halloween party I had to do more than that. I purchased bags of decorations from dripping blood patterned tablecloths, skulls, spider webs to drape everywhere, hinged hanging skeletons, mini cauldrons (in which I will serve the slime soup) and ghoul and bleeding hand wall clings. I even had skeletons popping up from behind doorways and monsters grabbing people. I also made pictures with eyes that follow you when you walk past, something surprisingly easy to do with instructions here.

Coffin, ghost and bat cookies

So with 3 of the senses: taste, look and feel sorted, all I needed now was the spooky music to listen to which I purchased a great selection on a CD. I stopped short at making it smell like Halloween (I did consider buying lots of smelly cheese to recreate the smell but decided against it in case people missed the point and thought that our place smelled like that anyway).

There’s a reason I love Nigella and that’s because she has things such as Blood Clots and Pus and Slime Soup in her cookbooks. Before you turn up your nose, of course it’s not really Blood Clots, Pus and Slime but it certainly looks as though it is which is all that counts really. Also  Donna Hay had some fantastic ideas for Halloween and I loved the Goblin faced pies, Ghost Meringues and Pumpkin Cheese dip which I accompanied with broomstick breadsticks.

Slime soup in cauldrons

A cocktail had to feature something gruesome of course and the one that my husband first thought up was the Bloody Mary (most appropriate). I served it in a test tube a la The Lock Up (the perfect place for Halloween). I would’ve loved to have served these standing up in an antique test tube rack but I missed out on one on ebay by minutes as I’d asked my husband to remind me (note to self: don’t rely on husbands!). We didn’t have a lot of plain Vodka but we did have some rather fantastic Finlandia Grapefruit Vodka, a gift from my friend Em, so we used that and called it a Sour Bloody Mary.

Goblin pies (recipe here)

What was vital to me was being able to do things ahead of time as Halloween falls on a Friday so I needed to be able to do plenty ahead of time and the evenings before and assembling everything before the witching hour of 8pm.

My costume was a Corpse Bride (a very popular one this year-apparently one of Barack Obama’s daughters is going as Corpse bride too!) and I bought a wedding dress on ebay intending to cut it up to resemble the Corpse Bride’s dress not realising that what I actually won was a brand new gorgeous and sumptuous wedding dress that I could not bear to cut into so I left it be, making myself scary with the makeup instead (I bet Chanel never realised that their Jeans de Chanel palette would come in so handy on Halloween).

I knew I had to do special cupcakes and I received a cupcake display stand from Queen Viv so of course I draped the cupcakes in spider’s web. Without further ado, welcome to NQN’s Ghastly and Gruesome Halloween party!

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Hallowe’en is one of my favourite holidays of the year. If only for the opportunity to dress up in a ghoulish outfit and eat Halloween themed food and drink. I don’t even need to go trick or treating, in fact I’ve never done so. Just the food and costumes will do me fine. And it’s food like the following Goblin Pies that really excites me.

My little Goblins!

I absolutely loved making these pies and cutting out the various faces for them. The first lot I made had more demure looking expressions but then I recalled seeing a picture of the Pumpkins at the start of Nigella’s Hallowe’en chapter in Feast and cut out more sinister looking ones. Use a sharp paring knife and whatever you can find to cut out the various parts (cutters tend to be a bit too big for these pies so I used clean pen lids for the eyes etc). And don’t you think the one in the picture above in the middle row second from left looks like a Mummy laughing?

More demure Goblin faces

These taste exactly and I do mean exactly like party pies but perhaps the best ones you’ve ever had. And if you mince the meat yourself you’ll know what exactly is in the meat pie. My friend Carbon Debit is currently in Romania and she told me that in the supermarket they’ll mince the meat freshly for you, you just choose the meat you want minced and they’ll do the rest.

But getting more wicked…

As for me, I’m counting down the days until Hallowe’en for we’re holding our first Hallowe’en party! Let the gruesome games begin muahahahaaaaaa…

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There’s nothing quite like playing tourist in your own city. Sure, I was born and bred in Sydney and love it to bits but there’s always something that I discover that makes me find it endlessly fascinating again. Queen Viv, Miss America and my husband and I are walking the short distance from a restaurant to the Shangrila Hotel for a Sugar Hit. Along the way we walk traverse some back streets, not usually somewhere that we’d go but we are feeling perhaps foolishly brave because of our numbers and the consumption of alcohol. I contemplate my weapons should anyone untoward attack us-I have at my disposal…a pair of heels. Hmm they are heels but they’re wedges so perhaps not quite the weapon I need. I also have my bag and a camera bag and that looks to be about it. It’s too late to turn back anyway and we’re reminded of our Jack the Ripper tour in London. Luckily the lane ways are warmly lit and have names such as Long’s Lane, a tilted brick lane.

We reach the Shangrila at 10:05pm exactly for our 10pm booking. My phone vibrates in my bag-the waiter is calling me and I tell him that we are in the lobby lounge waiting for someone to show us to a table. He tells us “Oh you didn’t know about the 15 minute rule? If no-one turns up then we give the table away”. Hmmm fair enough, except we are only 5 minutes late so it seems like an overeager gesture.

Brown Brothers Cienna Dessert wine

Interestingly, our dessert wine is a chilled red wine, not the usual golden sweet nectar we are usually served. It’s light and sweet and reminiscent of redcurrants.

Heavenly Bliss Mocktail $12

We sit down and contemplate the strawberry themed Sugar Hit. One of my readers flapflap had said that it was good for Strawberry lovers and we are indeed that (Queen Viv doesn’t like chocolate so we gave the chocolate themed Sugar Hits a wide berth). We also order a Mocktail, a Heavenly Bliss with a fruity and antioxidant packed sounding blend of fruit. It has mango, pineapple, strawberry, cranberry, orange with fresh blueberries. I don’t really see the blueberries in this, perhaps there aren’t many of those. It is rich, viscous and of course very fruity.

Strawberry and rhubarb mascarpone dacquoise with creme fraiche ice-cream accompanied by licorice infused strawberries complemented with Brown Brothers Cienna Dessert wine $20
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