Welcome to my Halloween graveyard!

Happy Hallowe’en my pretties! It’s the Wicked Witch of the East(ern Suburbs) here! Hop onto the end of my broomstick for a personal tour of my very own Hallowe’en party! I promise to lure you into my cottage with all sorts of gruesome, ghastly and frighteningly freaky goods.

I still don’t know what on earth possessed me to make 13 items for this Halloween party. Did I mention that I grossly overcater for these types of events? It seemed like a good idea at the time and I just kept adding things as I discovered them or thought of them. This over eagerness to feed does have its downsides and I found myself on the evening before the night of the party exhausted. Mr NQN had gone out for work drinks and didn’t come home until 10pm where he found me an incoherent mess. All I could wail was “I want my television” (i.e. the laptop) while lying prone on the bed kicking my feet in the air like an upended hedgehog.

Tombstone cookies-one for each guest!

Brain Shots!

Ghost open sandwiches and pumpkin open sandwiches

The next morning I awoke refreshed and glanced at my schedule. You can never keep a good ghoul down and inside me is also a strange mutation of Bree Van Der Kamp and Martha Stewart crossed with Morticia Addams. That day I had to pick up some cupcakes from Sparkle Cupcakery who were giving me some Halloween themed cupcakes for my party in a pumpkin spice flavour. My father had made the little menu cards (so please excuse some of the typos). I was visiting the Party People who were generously loaning me a whole bunch of gorgeously gruesome props and we also had to pick up some last minute items and Mr NQN’s costume. He of course wanted to go as Dexter Morgan.

Dragon’s Eye Devilled Eggs

“Can I go as Dexter?” he asked.

“In the white outfit with the blood spatter?” I asked him.

“No…not really”

“What do you mean then?

“I’ll wear a polo shirt and shorts”

“Nice try”.

Wobbly brain pate anyone?

Baked Brie spiderweb

As for me? I went as Little Red Riding Hood. I’m not quite sure why except that I’ve always wanted a red cape. I was going to wear fangs as I was supposed to be the mutant offspring of Little Red Riding Hood and the Wolf but the fangs that I bought made me look like I had a severe overbite. Mr NQN was going to come as the wolf except that all of the wolf masks that he tried on were itchy.

I handed out Vampire Cookie Pops to all of my guests-recipe to come!

Medusa’s head. Sing along with me “Isn’t she lovely…”

Witch’s Gingerbread House

I know, I know, Hallowe’en in on the 31st of October but this year, my friend The Second Wife and her fiancee Gravy Beard are getting married that weekend so we decided to have Hallowe’en a bit earlier this year. This meant that you could also use the recipes if you were so ghoulishly inclined. And many of the thirteen recipes here are very easy to do. Of course I don’t include the sanity straining gingerbread house above in that list

Floating Teeth Juice

“Worms in dirt anyone?” I ask as I hand out some delicious proteiny goodness

Or how about some bat wings?

There was food a plenty and all of my nearest and dearest were invited along. Everyone came dressed in costume-I am a costume nazi and if you don’t come in costume, you are banished to the gallows to live in eternity. We spent the evening eating, drinking, talking and playing games including the very fun horror movie version of charades. That’s right, if you come to my Halloween party, you will be subjected to games!

Broken glass shards and blood

All of the food worked a treat except for one item. These were supposed to be Dexter Blood Slides but they didn’t work so they became broken glass shards with blood which Queen Viv loved as they reminded her of toffees at school fetes (except for the blood I presume ).

Sparkle Cupcakery Pumpkin and Spice cupcakes $4.50 each

The Sparkle Cupcakes were an undeniable hit. Lou passed them around and they got an unanimous thumbs up from everyone that tried them. There was actual pumpkin in the cake itself which made it very soft and moist and we may have had a riot on our hands with this half dozen eagerly contested cupcakes!

…or eyeballs?

Anyway, without further ado, here are the recipes, should you wish to indulge your inner vampire! Settle in with a cup of tea or coffee though as this story is the most picture filled NQN story ever! And if you want to see my ghoulishly fabulous guests, scroll down!

So tell me Dear Reader, what would you get dressed up as for Halloween?

Bloody Brain Shots

This is such a seriously brilliant and brain like idea. I got this idea from fellow Halloween afficianado Not Martha who originally saw this recipe on Folkinz. I was amazed at how ingenious it was and used the curdling effect of lime on Baileys. I’m sure this is not what the Baileys people had intended for use of their creme liqueur but I have to say that it works beautifully. I also used the vodka and cranberry and vodka and blood orange that Smirnoff sent me in a cask no less. I used  a little syringe to add to the effect but according to the people at Folkinz the same effect can be had with a straw.

• 2 parts Smirnoff Vodka and Cranberry or Vodka and Blood Orange
• 1 part lime juice
• 1 small bottle of Baileys

1. Mix vodka and cranberry or vodka and blood orange with the lime juice and pour into shot glasses. Using a pipette, small syringe or straw, slowly drop small amount of Baileys into the shot glass to form a brain. It may gather and collect at the bottom of the glass but for the best effect place the droplets of the Baileys towards the edge of a glass. Using a spoon you can gently dislodge it from the bottom and the “brain” will float to the top! Watch your friends grimace and gag at how accurately brainy it looks.

Worms In Dirt

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Dear Reader, no doubt at one stage or another, you may have been asked to make a birthday or wedding cake for a friend or family member. I did one a few years ago for Mr NQN’s sister. I swore I would never do another such was the stress. The bride and groom wanted cream cheese frosting on a wedding that was held in the blistering  40+C heat of January in a room without air conditioning. I had panic filled nightmares of it dripping and melting and trying to pass that off as a deliberate effect.

Vincent Gadan

But then my friend The Second Wife asked me to make her wedding cake. The reason why I happily said yes was because she said “I would love absolutely anything you come up with. It can be Halloween themed. It can be made of anything. It can be a batshit crazy as you like!!! “. It  was a brief I could hardly refuse! I wanted it to be brilliant (and despite the fact that she had mentioned Halloween, it wasn’t going to be Halloween themed). So when I was offered a place of any of Patisse’s cooking classes I jumped at the French Croquembouche one thinking that I would be able to test out whether I could make one for her wedding or not. I had made choux quite a bit as I am a bit of a choux addict in le Religieuse, St Honore, Croqumebouche cupcakes, and a small croquembouche.

I walk into the Waterloo location at 5.45pm for the 6-10pm class where there are eight other people gathered. Jennifer from Patisse explains how the class will progress. Chef Vincent Gadan is teaching us tonight and he comes out with a flourish and explains the croquembouche to us. Mr NQN was coming along to photograph it but little did he know that I was going to get him to try his hand at making the croquembouche! Vincent points out that there are two men in the class and we later learn that one was given the gift from his girlfriend who suggested that it would be more entertaining to watch him in the class than to go out for drinks with her friends. The second guy is there with his girlfriend and up until he walked in, it was surprise that she had arranged-he thought that he was going to a taping of “The Footy Show” or a sports game!

Decorations we can choose from

Vincent brings us the croquembouche we will be making. It has about 50-60 choux balls on it and is about 30 cms / 1 foot high. He also shows us the decorations that we can choose from. There are fresh flowers, tiny choux balls covered with cocoa nibs, crystallised violet, chopped pistachios, pearl sugar and egg shaped silver dragees. I ask if Mr NQN and I can combine our choux balls and make one double that size as I want to test whether I can do a wedding sized croquembouche. They say yes!

The consistency of the choux pastry

We wash our hands and take our places at the bench. In front of us are the ingredients that have been measured out for us. We start with making the choux pastry. He shows us the approximate size of the buns that we need to make which is about an inch in diameter as they will expand slightly. The dough is straightforward, mixing the flour with the milk, water, sugar and salt that has been heated until boiling and we just cook this mixture and taking the steam out of it while stirring vigorously with a wooden spoon for  1 minute. Interestingly, Vincent  gives us the measurement of 5 grams of caster sugar as “six pinches”.

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That’s a dough hook (left) and a paddle (right)

Adding eggs gradually

“Dessecher” is the process of taking steam out of it. We then place it in a mixing bowl fixed with a paddle to remove even more steam. The whole eggs are then added to the mixture. This mixture then has to be placed in the fridge for 1-2 hours or overnight until it firms up as you cannot pipe it as it is as the texture is too soft. Never fear, he has made a batch of choux pastry at 5pm that day so that we have some ready for us.

Consistency of the choux batter once the steam is released, ready for refrigeration

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Having four days off in a row means that you can get up to mischief. Eating your body weight in chocolate eggs and hot cross buns is  one way to pass the time. Seeing friends and family is another. The only thing that presents itself as a problem to me during this blissful four day Easter break is shopping. The stores are usually closed on Good Friday and Easter Sunday so that means that even though I have two pantries full to bursting, I feel an almost warlike need to stock up on food. It’s the mere idea that I might run out of food that causes a chill.

I stockpiled rations on the Thursday and the Saturday night shopping late so that we would survive the Cruel Winter …I mean two days. I know it’s silly and doesn’t make sense but I did have Mr NQN’s brother The Assman coming over and a picnic (weather permitting) to go to so I needed the rations. After all you can’t feed guests just anything or bring something completely unfabulous to a picnic. I already had a good stash of chocolate already mainly bolstered by Mr NQN winning a gigantic Easter bunny at work as well as lots of eggs so I felt safe and comforted sitting upon my pile of goodies (and I’m sure you can picture me sitting on top of a mountain of food).

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