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!

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. 

Halloween Movies: The Nostalgia Edition

At a loss about what to watch this Halloween? Here are a few nostalgic favourites to get you in the mood. These are more fun and scary than blood and guts, just so you know. 

I've never seen  Hocus Pocus or Bedknobs and Broomsticks, so I decided to correct that oversight.  Hocus Pocus is witchy fun for the whole family, and not in that sickly sweet way. Loved it. Bedknobs, on the other hand... Well, it has an equal amount of fun and cringeworthy moments. The  way it reduces different minorities into stereotypes (Portobello Road, I'm looking at you) and the awful, recycled animation from Robin Hood were among the low points, and I didn't love Eglantine's character arc from independent witch to mother. The Nazi thing feels very stapled on, especially as the movie is set during wartime but doesn't really get into the real issues that much, it's all just background noise. I did like the dancing shoes, the armour coming to life in the end, and the opening of the movie, though.  

Want something a bit more grown up? Check out The Witches of Eastwick or Death Becomes Her. These movies, too, are of their time, and the gender roles in Death kind of bug me, but it's hard to be objective about movies you first saw in your teens.  

And who could forget The Addams Family? *snap, snap* Still so good. The Craft is the ultimate teen witch movie, in my opinion. 

And last but not least, Practical Magic. This does fall in the rom com category, and whether you'll enjoy this probably depends on how you feel about Sandra Bullock films.  

Watching these movies again it surprised me how many of them were about women chasing after or fighting over men. As a kid/teen, those weren't the things that stuck. I remember the twisting-the-neck around and hole-through-the stomach special effects from Death Becomes Her, the cherry stone scene from Eastwick, and the midnight margaritas from Practical Magic. It didn't occur to me to question how they portrayed women, but these were the gender roles we were offered in the 1980s and 1990s. Today these movies would be very different, I think. The world has changed a lot, hasn't it? 

What about you? Any childhood favourites that didn't age too well?

Shoggoth Cake and Scary Strawberries

I had a Halloween party on Friday, and here are some of the treats I came up with.

The Shoggoth cake was inspired by Where's My Shoggoth by Ian Thomas

Here's a close-up. 

I saw Christine McConnell's screamberries on her flickr page, and I had to try to make some. They're not nearly as nice as hers, but they did make my pumpkin pie a bit more interesting. 

Christine McConnell is amazing. If you need Halloween food inspiration, check out her flickr. Seriously, there's some amazing stuff there. The woman made an alien face hugger from pastry dough. Respect. I just found out that she has a cookbook available! I'm definitely getting that. 

The savouries were a bit more conventional. I made mushroom-fennel pizza with paprika-fried pumpkin seeds and roasted beet, pine nut, and chèvre pizza. The red pizza crust has pureed beets in it.  Both turned out nicely.

Happy Halloween!

Etymology Expeditions: The Halloween Edition part 2

This week we'll continue with the creepier side of etymology. Last week we did (un)dead creatures, so let's see about some live ones for this week.

Demon, from Latin daemon, "spirit," from Greek daimon "deity, divine power, lesser/guiding spirit" from Proto Indo-European root da- "to divide," as in divider of destinies. The "god of the heathens" or "unclean spirit" meaning gave root to a fun synonym in Old English: hellcniht, "hell-knight."

Werewolf, from Old Englis werewulf, from wer "man, male person" and wulf "wolf." In a similar vein we have Middle Dutch weerwolf, Old High German werwolf, and the Swedish varulf. Fun fact: in the ancient Persian calendar, the eighth month (October-November) was called Varkazana, Month of the Wolf-Men.

Witch we've done before, but what about warlock? It's from Old English  wærloga, "traitor, liar, enemy, devil," from wær "faith, fidelity, a compact" and the second element is related to leogan, to lie.  The original meaning seems to have been "oath-breaker," which was used of giants and cannibals also. The "in league with the devil" meaning is only from the 1300s. The "male equivalent of witch"  thing is from Scotland in the 1560s.

Creature of course comes from Latin creatura "thing created," but it doesn't say by whom. On a related note, the word monster comes from Old French monstre, "monster, monstrosity"  and directly from Latin monstrum "divine omen, portent, sign; abormal shape, monster, monstrosity,"  figuratively "repulsive character, object of dread, awful deed, abomination," from root monere "to warn. " The omen thing might seem strange, but you have to remember that at the time abnormal animals were regarded as portents of evil. The meaning was extended to imaginary animals like griffins etc. in 14th century. Remember Grendel from Beowulf? He was called an aglæca, a word related to aglæc "calamity, terror, distress, oppression." 

Not a creature, but let's do jack-o-lantern as a bonus. It's from the 1660s, a local name for the will-o-the-wisp, Latin igneous fatuus, "foolish fire." The carved pumpkin thing only added 1834 by the American English. 


Have a creepy and glorious Halloween! 

Sources:

http://www.etymonline.com

Spine-Tingling Halloween Movies

When it comes to scary movies, my taste veers more towards supernatural horror, fairy tales, and Victoriana. Subtle is good; you'll find no splatter or slasher flicks here. (Although, I do have a soft spot for Scream. It's a growing-up-in-the-nineties thing.)

My favourite Halloween movies are by Tim Burton, big surprise. The Nightmare Before Christmas is the ultimate Halloween movie, but the others work, too. I forgot to include Sleepy Hollow in the picture, but that's probably my favourite after Nightmare. 

For the more fairy-tale minded amongst you, Labyrinth might do the trick. It's got everything: goblins, weird creatures, talking door knockers, and David Bowie as the Goblin King. *swoon*

Who you gonna call? You can't go wrong with Ghostbusters.

I love Alien and Aliens. No matter how many times I watch these, they're still among the scariest movies I've ever seen, and the special effects have stood the test of time. These have an added nostalgia bonus for me, because when I was a kid I'd sneak down to watch these and then have nightmares for the next three nights. I'm sure my parents were delighted. 

Don't you love old 50s creature features? Here's a few of my faves. The old Hammer Horror films are fun too. 

What about you guys? Any movie recs?

Etymology Expeditions: The Halloween Edition part 1

I adore Halloween, in case you haven't noticed, so this will be a two-parter. Yes, we love our creepy ghoulies here at Curiousthings.

Here we go.

Ghost, from Old English ghast "breath, spirit, angel, demon; man, person." In Biblical use "soul, spirit, life." It's interesting that most Indo-European words for ghost double with reference to supernatural spirits. Most have a base sense of appearance, like Greek phantasma, French spectre, Polish widmo, and Old Slavonic videti.  Then there's the concept of coming back from the otherworld, like the French revenant.

Let's continue with Ghoul. It comes from the Arabic ghul, a spirit that robs graves and feeds on the bodies, from ghala "he seized."

Skeleton comes from Latin sceleton, "bones of the body," from Greek skeleton soma "dried-up mummy, skeleton." So skeleton actually means dried up. Their got the meaning of "bare outline" from the 1600s, hence expressions like skeleton crew, skeleton key.

I think zombies will fit right in here. The word comes from West African zumbi "fetish" and nzambi "god." Originally it was the name of a snake god, later meaning "reanimated corpse" in the voodoo cult.

We've got room for one more dead dried-up thing: Mummy, from Medieval Latin mumia, from Arabic mumiyah, "embalmed body," from Persian mumiya, "asphalt, from mum, "wax."

I've done a whole post on vampires and witches were explored in the fairy tale edition, so click the links to explore those if you want.

See you next week for part two.

Sources:
http://www.etymonline.com/

Scary Books For Halloween

It's that time of year again, so I thought I'd share some of my favourite scary books to get you in the mood for Halloween.

The Graveyard Book by Neil Gaiman isn't actually that scary, as it's a children's book, but I love it. Almost anything by Gaiman works, really. 

Here's a classic. Still works.

Joe Hill knows what he's doing. This is my favourite one of his books. The short story collection, 20th Century Ghosts, is pretty spine-chilling, too.  

You can count on Jim Butcher to deliver the creepy ghoulies.  As you can see I love these books to pieces. Literally. Dres-DEN, Dres-DEN, Dres-DEN!

Or you can try the old Victorian tales. Bram Stoker's Dracula is also one of my faves, but my edition has a stupid cover on it, so I didn't take a picture of that one. 

What's your favourite scary book?