Happy Halloween!

brilliant

Each year, I bake a Halloween-themed cake for dessert on October 31st. Because you just can't have too much sugar on that night.

Over the years, I've covered most of the usual suspects, from ghosts to witches to monsters to jack-o-lanterns to pumpkin patches to werewolves. Something I've never made, however, but often considered, is a Halloween gingerbread house. I've dreamed of one day creating something like this:

Or perhaps this:

Or maybe even an entire gingerbread village:

But inevitably, reality rears its ugly head and I am reminded of my . . . less-than-stellar decorating skills. I'm no stranger to gingerbread. I've attempted gingerbread houses at Christmas. And the less said about that, the better. So after a few moments of quiet reflection, all thoughts of Halloween gingerbread glory are banished from my mind while I plan my next monster cake.

Until this year.

Because someone in the Canadian Living Test Kitchen (probably someone like me) designed a Halloween gingerbread house for the shaping-and-frosting-challenged. And it is truly simple, yet brilliant.

A haunted gingerbread shack.

Slight errors in measuring the gingerbread pieces? No problem.

Sections deformed and misshapen while being transferred to baking sheet? It's okay.

Difficulty maneuvering a piping bag? Forget about it.

The beauty of the gingerbread shack? The more you screw up, the more authentic it looks. You can't go wrong. Had this been the typical gingerbread house, mine would have been a disaster. Edges not quite straight. Pieces unevenly rolled. Too long. Too short. Too crumbly. With the gingerbread shack, it's all part of the plan.

And the broken windows and giant rats just add to the charm.

(Nice gingerbread houses courtesy of Flickr)

what could it mean?

Is it a pumpkin cheesecake . . . or a pumpkin pi ?

I sense the mathematical gods are attempting to communicate with me.

no escape

They sat peacefully in the autumn sunshine. Calm. Content. Unsuspecting.

Oh, they had heard the rumours. Seen their neighbours disappear. Only to see them return mutilated and disemboweled. Some barely recognizable.

But it wouldn't happen to them. It couldn't. After all, hadn't they been sitting here for weeks now? Untouched. Secure. No, they would escape the cruel fate that had befallen others. They were sure of it. Just two more days.

But it seems fate had other ideas.

Sadly, no one is immune.

and the winner is . . . chocolate

It sounded too good to be true. Truffles that combined cream cheese, chocolate and pumpkin. All three flavours blending perfectly. The truffle dream team. But no. One of them had to dominate. Take control. Push the others into the background. The culprit: chocolate. Next time, there will be severe restrictions placed on chocolate's participation.

Here's what happened:

11 oz. semi-sweet chocolate, melted

4 oz. cream cheese

1/3 cup pumpkin puree

1 cup icing sugar

3 Tbsp. cocoa powder

cinnamon & nutmeg, to taste

Combined all ingredients. Refrigerated until firm. Rolled into truffles.

There was also something about kneading marzipan, tinting it orange, rolling pieces of it around each truffle, and indenting the sides to resemble pumpkins. Sounds impressive. But with only three days until Halloween, I refused to even consider it. Instead, I took the easy way out and rolled them in these snazzy orange candy sprinkles. Fancy.

They tasted great. If you like chocolate with a hint of cinnamon and nutmeg. And I do. But next time, the cream cheese and spice content will go up. Way up.

frosty

The graveside mourners woke up with a layer of frost on their heads this morning.





They didn't seem to mind.

uh-oh

Three days until Halloween and of course, no costume yet. Why am I not surprised? Despite good intentions, it's always the last thing prepared. But it could be worse. Progress has been made. It has been started. In actuality, it was started weeks ago and then delayed. Partly because of other distractions and partly because it's one of those projects that I'm making up as I go along. Like most of my projects. And I'll be honest. There have been a few . . . missteps. Miscalculations. Disastrous choices.

Right now, it looks like this (and yes, my work table is used for air hockey in the off-season):

But that's okay. All will be well. Still plenty of time. It will be completed. It has to be. Because I refuse to run to Zellers on Saturday afternoon for a last-minute mask. The memories are still too raw.

fearless

Overcoming my fear of vampires (or perhaps large blood-sucking insects) one cupcake at a time.

inflatable memories

I can vividly remember the first time I saw a giant Halloween inflatable on someone's front lawn. I was driving along one evening just after dark, when there, high on a hilltop, sat the largest inflatable pumpkin I had ever seen. I slowed down. My head turned.

I didn't swerve. I didn't hit a tree. I didn't plow into a crowd of pedestrians. But I did admire it. It was bright. It was stunning. It was unique. It was the embodiment of Halloween. I had not seen its like before.

Then, suddenly, I saw its like everywhere.

The unique has become ubiquitous.

warm and dry outside

What a difference a day makes. From winter jacket weather to t-shirt weather within a couple of hours. The tombstones enjoyed the unseasonably warm day as well. Stretched out on the grass in the backyard. Drying in the sun after getting a fresh coat of paint.

warm and dry inside

This weekend proved too windy and rainy for even the living dead.

This graveyard mourner wisely chose to watch over the cemetery from the relative warmth of indoors.

The Wolfman: immortalized in cookie dough

Undeterred by my difficulties with the skeleton cookies (I blame the icing) , I attempted another cookie project using the same recipe.

This one looked significantly easier. And it was something of an homage to my favourite classic monster. How could I refuse?

No complex shapes. No struggles with uncooperative icing. Apart from a few cracked, seedy-looking eyes, they turned out well. Maybe it was a rough night for poor Larry.

Yet another reason to love the Wolfman.

the end of the journey

Universal brewed up the tana leaves one last time to revive the mummy, Kharis. I think it's significant that both this final mummy film of the era, The Mummy's Curse, and its predecessor, The Mummy's Ghost, were both released in 1944. Almost as if Universal decided, "Let's get this over with and put him to rest."

The Mummy's Curse, however, is not a bad movie. Certainly a step above, or perhaps several steps above, the two previous mummy films. This improvement in quality isn't entirely obvious at the beginning of the film, which resembles a rollicking musical comedy. But soon, the music stops and the horror begins. Sort of.

Decades have passed. Kharis and Princess Ananka are still buried in the swamp, where they have remained for the past 25 years. But you can't stop progress. And now developers are planning to drain the swamp to build . . . something.

Coincidentally, archaeologists from the Smithsonian have also arrived to search for Kharis and Ananka. Accompanying them is a quiet, unassuming scientist from Egypt. Or perhaps not so unassuming. Not surprisingly, he turns out to be another in the long line of Egyptian priests sworn to protect Kharis through the centuries. Start brewing the tana leaves.

The locals are agitated. They've heard the legend. But they aren't taken seriously until someone discovers one of those rotting pieces of mummy wrapping that Kharis keeps dropping. But by then, the bodies have started to pile up.

Kharis is determined to track down Ananka. No matter who gets in his way. I started to feel sorry for poor Kharis. He's so plodding. And Ananka. She seemed a little confused and unsure. Must be the side-effects of that soul transfer.

Everyone came together at the abandoned monastery on the hill which no one had really noticed throughout the film. There . . . it all ended rather quickly. There was no real sense of closure. But can there ever be closure for someone who's been alive for centuries? And with that thought, so ends my Universal classic horror viewing for another season.

deprivation

I've pretty much given up looking for special Halloween products in the grocery aisles. I've accepted the fact that my local grocery stores do not stock special Halloween cereals. Or Halloween pop. Or Halloween cookies. It's been difficult. But I've learned to live with it.

But just when I think I'm over it, something happens to lure me back and give me renewed hope. And so it was when I spotted this advertisement on the back of a magazine. For Chapman's seasonal ice cream. Santa's Milk & Cookies. Holiday Twist. And . . . new this year . . . Praline Pumpkin Pie. My heart skipped a beat. This could be it. The turning point in my quest. My grocery store carries Chapman's ice cream. I've seen Christmas varieties in past years. It seemed only logical that they would carry the Halloween flavour as well. I grabbed the car keys and rushed out the door.

But I should have known better. There was plenty of Chapman's ice cream. I think they may have even been preparing an area for the Christmas flavours. But Praline Pumpkin Pie? Of course not. When will I learn?

mmmmmmm . . . bone paste

One of the joys of the Halloween season is indulging in candy with wild abandon. All sorts of candy. Some of which can be hard to find at other times of the year. Candy corn. Miniature chocolate bars. Frosted eyes of newt. Bittersweet bone paste. The list is endless.

I've gone out and stocked up on my favourites. So I'm well-prepared for the days ahead. Although . . . I find the crows' blood a little tasteless this year.

nocturne

It's good to see Halifax following the lead of other cities and devoting a night to a free city-wide art event.

Last Saturday, galleries, businesses and public spaces played host to a night of exhibits, temporary installations and performances.

Not all night, however. Only until midnight. But that's okay. I need my sleep.

I almost froze to death on the harbour ferry, en route to see the community-built Bluenose Ghosts sculptures. I anticipated these being a highlight of the evening. And they were.

But if I had to choose a favourite, it would be Resurrection. A temporary installation which paid homage to a recently-demolished heritage building by re-creating its ghostly facade on fabric. Behind the facade, inside the building's former space, now an abandoned lot, was a luggage graveyard. Each suitcase representing a business from the city's past.

Creepy and historical. Two of my favourite things.

skeleton (cookie) dance

Recipes with a Halloween twist always attract my attention. Especially when they involve chocolate. So I was quite excited recently to stumble upon this one.

Chocolate sugar cookies. Decorated like dancing skeletons. Delicious and easy. Deceptively easy.

I gathered the ingredients.

The cookie part went well. Then it was time to create the skeletal images to match the magazine photo. As a side note, I'd be curious to know how long it took to create the perfect cookies for that photo shoot. I'm guessing a long, long time. Or at least that's the belief I'm clinging to.

I blame the icing. Despite following the recipe to the letter, it was too stiff. Ridiculously stiff. The resulting skeleton . . . if that's what it can be called . . . well, he was the first one eaten.

More milk in the icing. Still not right. Although this group had a skeletal alien quality that wasn't entirely unappealing.

Then, like Goldilocks, the third attempt was measurably more successful. Still some aliens in the crowd, but a few were beginning to bear some resemblance to their published likeness.

The completed horde of chocolate skeletons looked overwhelming. But they were devoured in under twelve hours. Obviously a testament to my cookie decorating skill.