Graveyard Cake for Halloween

Since we're doing some work on the house, I won't be having a Halloween party this year. I didn't want to miss the fun entirely so I made this graveyard cake for game night at a friend's house.

Not bad for a first attempt. It was downright tasteful before I added the pink monsters and the jelly bugs, but more is more, right? The tree, fence and cat I made myself by drizzling dark chocolate on parchment paper with a teaspoon, which was surprisingly easy. Mistakes don't matter too much, because once the chocolate hardens you can just snap off the extra bits. 

Happy Halloween, everybody!

Dinner with Dalí

Did you know Salvador Dalí published a cookbook in 1973? Like Dalí himself, it's gloriously weird and OTT, and, best of all, he did the illustrations himself! My copy is the Taschen English translation, which is beautiful, but I would like to get a copy of the French original, because it does feel like something is maybe getting lost in translation.  Just check out the prosaic translations of the index below: "the cannibalisms of autumn" is apparently eggs and seafood. Don't speak French? Go on, feed a few of these into Google translate. It's very entertaining. 

Here's the man himself. Wouldn't you love attend that dinner party?

As for the recipes, they're not the most practical sort, like this crayfish tower, but they are fun to read. 

And you gotta love the illustrations!

There are also some menus included in the book.

Yeah, I probably won't be trying out the frog pasties or the many ways of cooking calf's brains, but as a curiosity, this was absolutely worth getting. I got mine from Amazon, but different versions seems be available online. 

Happy Halloween!

As Halloween falls on a Monday this year, we had our party on Saturday. 

I made blackberry-cranberry punch with red grapefruit slices. (Blood orange would have been even better, but I couldn't find one.) I like to make the punch non-alcoholic and let people spike their own glass if they want to. Kraken rum was great in this. The other bottle's Monkey 47, Schwarzwald gin from Germany. 

For the cake this year I decided to trick out a chandelier cake topper I bought from Tiger a few years ago. I think most people don't actually like to eat fondant, so this way I had my fun decorating the cake but the topper came right off when it was time to eat. Above are a few in-progress shots. And yes, I used my sonic screwdriver spork to do the suction cups. It was just the right size. For the cake I used this recipe from the Foodess. It's the best chocolate cake recipe I've found yet. The frosting's a mix of chocolate-flavoured cream cheese, a bit of margarine, powdered sugar, cold coffee,  and cocoa powder. 

Here's the finished product. 

And lit up.

I had to try the monster cookies that have been on everyone's Pinterest this year. My vision was to make them black and white and lemony, but guess what? Even Wilton's paste dyes don't have enough pigment to dye cookie dough black. I ended up throwing out the first batch, which turned out a dismal grey. For the second try I adapted my favourite chocolate chip cookie recipe (just added enough cocoa powder to make it dark and then mixed in the black dye). You could probably use any chocolate cookie recipe, but you want something that comes out a bit lumpy for that monster look. The eyes go on after baking,when the cookies are still soft. 

Autumn-coloured crackers and pecans.

Cheese! You can go for the weirder-looking ones on Halloween. 

I was going for that Victorian botanical illustration look with this pie, but it would probably work better with a smoother filling. I don't like pie crust that much and it always seems to come out undercooked, so this one has veggies and brown rice in it, no crust. 

Vegetable chips and fruit, colour-coordinated :)

For activities, we played a Halloween version of Scattergories my friends had made, a hilarious drawing game called A Fake Artist Goes to New York, and watched the The Thing from Another World, the '50s version. 

So that's my Halloween this year. Hope you have a good one!

P.S. For more Halloween goodness, here's what I what I was up to last year. 

A Steampunky Bachelorette Party

      

                    

My friend is getting married in July, and I'm one of the bridesmaids, so of course my co-bridesmaid and I started planning the bachelorette party immediately. After some consideration, we decided to go with a steampunk theme. 

                              

The program featured running away to the circus, brunch and a guided tour of the botanical gardens,  a steampunk photoshoot, a croquet tournament, and dinner and the sauna at my parents' summer house. 

For party favours we made "the language of flowers" cards (picture above) and another set with "Fan Flirtations" on the other side. 

                

                                    I got all the supplies for these at Presento. 

                

For croquet, we split up into two teams. Here are the prizes for the winners. The lollipops and moustache paper clips are from Tiger. 

                

The favour bags and paper plates etc. are from the juhlahumua webshop, which had awesome stuff. 

                                          Here are some props we used for the photoshoot:

For the food we did some themed snacks and drinks before the sauna, then some barbecue for dinner, and themed desserts. 

Here's some pictures of the food:

                            

                              

                                    Kraken rum + Curiosity Cola = The Curious Kraken. 

                              

                              

                               

The inspiration for the gear cookies and chocolate cakes came from the Steampunk Tea Party cookbook.

                                         This is how I made the decorations for the cakes: 

                                

The putty is for making silicone moulds. You mix the two colours, then press any object you want a mould of into the stuff , wait twenty minutes, remove the object, and then let the mould dry overnight. If you want to try making your own moulds, make sure the putty you're using is food safe. 

               

              

 I also got a chance to try my gear cookie cutter. For filled cookies, you can make the base without pressing on the round part of the cutter, and the top part with the cutout.  I ordered it from here. 

                             

                        

                                      I also made this mini top hat for the bride-to-be.

                          

Here are some of the books we read from for the evening's entertainment. They're all from Salakirjat. From the top left, we have The Book of Kissing, Advice for Making Yourself Beautiful, Woman, and How to Conquer Her: The Memoirs of A Gentleman, and How to Become a Bride in Fourteen Days.

I had a great time, and I hope everybody else did, too.  

                        

Happy Blogaversary!

                             

Wow, I can't believe it's been a whole year already! Let's celebrate with these "The Colour Out of  Space" cupcakes. For Halloween I topped them with those lollipops that look like planets, but as I don't have any left, here's a cute robot instead.

And here's the colour part:

                          

I used a vanilla cupcake recipe, flavoured with a little rum (for maximum sanity point loss, use absinthe),  and the frosting's a lime-flavoured buttercream. Goes well with Earl Grey. (Hot.)


I've really enjoyed blogging. Finally there's a place for all my strange projects and writerly ramblings.  Thanks for reading. More weirdness to come...

Bunny Buns and Easter Fun

                              

I hope you're all enjoying the Easter holidays. I certainly am. We had guests over so I managed to do some Easter baking, too. These macaroons are stuffed with white chocolate and I piped the little chick faces on with coloured icing. (And no, I didn't make the macaroon shells from scratch. Macaroons are impossible. Sometimes they turn out fine, but 90 % of the time I manage to screw them up: they bubble into huge flying saucers in the oven, fall flat, or break when I try to detach them from the baking sheet. Give yourself a break and buy the shells. Or even buy ready-made macaroons, pipe on the decorations, and accept all compliments graciously. No one has to know.)

I also saw the cutest bunny buns online, and wanted to try them. Apparently they're Japanese steamed buns with a sweet filling. After some googling I found a recipe for the dough, and as I have no idea where I could find azuki beans for the filling, I made a sweet coconut paste.

Here's a work-in-progress shot. You make the dumpling, flip it over, cut the ears with scissors, and use the chopstick to make the eyes. I also used the flat of the chopstick to press on the ear flap for a more three-dimensional look. 

                          

                                      You can see the detail a bit better here. 

                     Unfortunately, the steaming part didn't go so well. Here's the result: 

I don't have a bamboo steamer, so I don't know if that was the problem. I decided to slather the rest with egg wash and stick them in the oven. 

I think these look a bit better. The dough was a bit tasteless, but it held its shape well. I might try make savoury ones next time. 

                            

Here are my back-up bunny buns, made with a tried-and-true recipe. Not as cute, but tasted better. 

                             

                                          Here they are at the coffee table.

                              

                I also attended a board-game night with friends. Kingsburg was super fun!

Image from Wikipedia.org

                                           

I was supposed to get some writing done, but I spent most of yesterday in my pyjamas reading The Wise Man's Fear by Patrick Rothfuss. Very addictive. I can't remember when I last enjoyed a book this much. The first book of the series, The Name of the Wind, came out years ago, and I actually started reading it. I got about a hundred pages in and still didn't like it, so I stopped reading. Over the years so many people have recommended the book to me that I finally decided to give it another chance. For the first book, it took me to about 60% before I started enjoying it, but the second one is great from the get-go.

It's strange. Usually, if I don't like a book after a few hundred pages, I rarely change my mind. I'm glad I gave The Name of the Wind another chance. I love the story world and all the detail, the characters are (mostly) fun, and above all, I love Kvothe. I know a lot of people are complaining that he's a Mary Sue type character, and he does have many unlikely skills, but it didn't bother me. And I don't think anyone can say that Rothfuss goes easy on him. Nope, Kvothe gets a pretty raw deal. Especially in the second book, Rothfuss' writing is so easy to read and unpretentious that it's very easy to slip into Kvothe's head and live the story. I think it also helps that Kvothe always has a clear, tangible goal, so it doesn't feel like nothing is happening, even in the slower parts. Rothfuss makes everything seem interesting and exciting, and the exposition rarely feels exposition-y.

                            So, have a great weekend. I'm going to curl up with Kvothe now.