Hello my pretties! Take my (severed) hand and let me give you a peek into my annual Halloween party. It's an event that gets me going throughout the year. This month was particularly busy with the Sydney International Food Festival and before I knew it, it was the 20th of October and I hadn't even sorted out my costume.
Luckily I had been planning this party even before last year's finished (yes I'm an obsessive kind of person, can you tell?) and I had my menu sorted. I wanted to make different things from last year and I wanted it to be even more grisly than last year. I waited and waited and waited for my oven. It was about a month late and was on the way to me from the nice people at LG. It finally arrived and I can already see that she (and it is a she no doubt) is also something that loves dramatic entrances so we'll get along just fine. I was set for my baking duties and so I had to get my costume together.
Bloody Brain Pannacotta and Shortbread Witch's Fingers
I am not one for sewing. In fact the only craft I can muster up is really cooking. So I chose to buy my costume and there was one I had my heart set on, the Queen of Hearts from Alice in Wonderland (I even had the tiara ready for it). Now that I had my outfit sorted, I needed to turn my attention to the decorations. Places were selling out of their Halloween goodies and whenever I'd walk into a shop, there would be a gaggle of people amongst the Halloween section with adults and kids alike grabbing costumes and decorations.
I wanted to go more ghoulish and squeamish this year so I went with Donna the Dead, the moaning sensor activated animated moaning head. I picked up my charming severed head from The Party People in Sans Souci and discovered a treasure trove of ghoulish goodies. We got to chatting and they agreed to lend me some props for the party including these two charming mummies and a faux bloody brain and severed hand! Mr NQN dressed up as a surgeon gone psychotic and answered the door holding the body parts (he was originally to go as Hannibal Lecter holding a bottle of chianti, fava beans and a liver).
But enough dithering, let me show you the food which is always one of the most important parts to a celebration aside from the company!
Spaghetti Mummy
Did you make this recipe? Share your creations by tagging @notquitenigella on Instagram with the hashtag #notquitenigella
Rated 5 out
of 5 by
2 lovely
readers. Share your rating:
During Halloween Mummies seem to be the order of the day here (see Mummy Hot Dogs) and when I saw a picture of this in Claire Crespo's The Secret Life of Food, I knew this was a definite winner. It's easy too and can be done with pre bought sauce and pasta (and you'd better believe I used pre bought with the amount of prep I had to do).
Happy Halloween! This creepy flayed skin face started off its life as a pirate skull as I needed a skull base on which to make my flayed skin face. I simply bought 1/2 a kilo or 1lb of shaved ham and arranged it on top of the skull and added some eyeballs and voila that was the simplest and easiest dish!
This Halloween Creepy Crawly Cake started off it's life as chocolate and zucchini cake as it was part of the monthly column I was writing for Webchild. I found these fabulous creepy crawlies at Aldi (a place I find some surprisingly good stuff) and there were centipedes, rats and snakes in the mix. I could have done a regular chocolate cake but I knew that it would be even more gruesome with the green bits of zucchini in it.
This Halloween chocolate "slime" pudding is not quite as gruesome or unappealing as it sounds, this is simply a white chocolate custard pudding using the green white chocolate candy melts that Barbara sent me. Of course you could use white chocolate and green food colouring which is just as easy. Just know that serving this in mini cauldrons is quite necessary for the whole effect!
I made these as I was sent some boxes of Rondnoirs for the Tobie Puttock Dinner of Discovery. As soon as I saw them I knew I wanted to incorporate them into my Halloween party. Little did I realise that Mr NQN was a huge fan of these and ate my whole supply so they sent me some more which I promptly hid (near the cleaning products - somewhere where I know he never ventures!). They're fiddly though and tying them up in the branches using invisible thread is a tad tedious and if I were to do it again, I'd perhaps glue them to a Halloween background.
You can't have a magical Halloween party without some sort of Harry Potter food and Butterbeer is the easiest drink to make! I based this recipe from Alexandra from Chefspiration who made Butterbeer to commemorate the new Harry Potter movie. I wasn't able to find butterscotch syrup so I bought a vanilla syrup and used apricot nectar to give it the right colour.
Reader Comments
Loading comments...Add Comment