Happy Hallowe'en 2010!!

Enjoy my little photo montage of Hallowe'en 2010

 

 My 'mandala' pumpkin design....

I started off by enlarging a geometric layout I did a while ago for a handmade rug and printed it out on the draft setting so as not to waste precious ink...you know how that goes. James loaned me a nice punching implement and I punched little holes through the outline of the design to give me the 'bones' to work on when I started to carve the pumpkin proper.

Here I am beginning the carving and not knowing where the heck this design is taking me...I haven't carved before only cut right  through the pumpkin to make cute faces etc. James keeps telling me as I use another of his tools..."Don't cut towards your fingers or you'll be sorry!!" I listened for once in my life and made it through with narry a blemish.

The finished result...as you can see an old friend from last Hallowe'en has joined us...Pumpkin Boy 2009...see him in his youth in the pic two below.

I couldn't decided which picture I preferred more - the one above or below so I posted both...isn't the reflection on the table suitably spooky??

What a difference a year makes...'Pumpkin Boy' has really deteriorated in this last year...out in all weathers and living hard, I hope my looks don't go this fast!!

An appropriately 'thorny' Fall/Autumn picture from the world outside today...

HAPPY HALLOWE'EN...don't eat too much candy!!

"Double, double toil and trouble;
Fire burn, and cauldron bubble."
from Mr. Shakespeare

Pie Pumpkin Custard Pies for Hallowe'en!!

Yum, here is a well lighted close up of the finished creamy, deliciousness of a fruity, spice spiked, vanilla infused pumpkin bowl of divinity!!

...and here is the uncooked pumpkin custard 'pie' before she heads off into the oven for a nice, warm bake...nestled in her little padding of aluminium foil to keep her steady as she blows!!

THE RECIPE (again from an ancient copy of British Country Living)

Ingredients:

1 6" pie pumpkin, halved and cleaned

soft salted butter...a large pat (like me)

2 large eggs whisked together

10 fl oz US (½ pt UK) heavy/double cream

1/4 teaspoon cinnamon...more if you like I am not a big fan of cinnamon

½ teaspoon at least of freshly grated nutmeg...I do really like nutmeg

1/4 teaspoon allspice

1 teaspoon vanilla essence/extract

1 teaspoon almond essence/extract

2 heaped tablespoons chopped crystalized ginger

2 heaped tablespoons candied orange peel...(I did my own and added lemon juice to the water and sugar when it was boiling down...tasted great)

2 heaped tablespoons currants

3 heaped tablespoons sugar

2 tablespoons of rum if you like, then it's like baked eggnog with fruit added in!...I didn’t use it because I don’t have any rum!!

THE PROCESS:

1. Heat oven to 400F

2. Mix together in a jug, ready to pour, the cream, eggs, sugar, spices, ginger, candied peel, currants, extracts...in other words everything but the pumpkins and butter...let it sit a while to steep the flavours.

3. Slather the cut and cleaned pumpkins with the soft butter and sprinkle sugar over the rims...then slash the insides of the pumpkins criss-crossedy, sit them in crumpled up pieces of aluminium foil in a baking pan/on a cookie sheet so you can keep them level - basically make a 'nest' of foil for them to sit securely in.

4. Put the EMPTY pumpkin halves in the oven and bake for about 20 minutes.

5. Remove from the oven and place a on a level surface - pour in the custard and spoon in the solids from the bottom of the jug but do not overfill - the custard expands a little when baking, if you have extra put into a ramekin and bake in a bain marie/water bath.

6. If you like grate more fresh nutmeg over the custards.

7. Bake again for about another 20-25 minutes until the custard is almost completely set...I find the custard is so much smoother if you remove it from the oven when it still jiggles a tiny bit in the middle...it will continue to cook as it cools...if you catch it just right, which hooray I did, this custard is as smooth as the divine creme brulee I used to eat at Dean and Deluca in NY!!!

8. Allow to cool till just warm.

9. WOW...mine turned out really light, smooth and beautifully flavoured...bon chance with yours!!!

Awwww...my little pumpkin custard already made some new friends!!

Oh no!!! Who is that tapping on the window on this perfect Hallowe'en night in Maine??? Still blustery, balmy, full moon...doesn't get any better than this!! 

Trick or treacle toffee?

Here is a recipe for the Brit delight, Treacle Toffee, which could in the US be called molasses toffee, but as I love the word treacle so much then treacle it will remain...the word treacle sounds like the sound treacle makes when you stick a spoon in a jar of it and then pull the spoon out....that's a treacle sound! 

Treacle toffee is well known in Blighty for Bonfire/Guy Fawkes night which is coming up soon on November 5th...so make it for Hallowe'en (or All Hallow's Eve or Samhain or...) or next Wednesday! I am not a big fan of treacle/molasses generally, it reminds me of licorice which makes my face crinkle, but there's something about treacle toffee that I really like and I can't quite say what it is, probably the addition of butter, what isn't improved by THAT!!! In Britain I think the best treacle toffee is made by Thornton's , where they have huge trays of it with little hammers to break it up ready for your edification. (Thornton's also do a bazzin' Apricot Parfait...dark chocolate with apricot cream and crystallized-apricot-bits centres!! YUMMY!!!)

I have taken my recipe from the book you see above, 'Farmhouse Kitchen II' which is a treasure trove of good old fashioned British stick-to-your-ribs recipes, I can ALWAYS find something in there I want to make but I do have to admit this recipe is not going to be an exact one as either I don't have the candy-making thing down or my candy thermometer is totally out of whack...regardless here we go with an imprecise recipe!!

INGREDIENTS:

8oz (in weight) molasses/treacle

8oz brown sugar (I'm sure you can use white if that is all you have!)

2oz butter

2 1/2 tablespoons cider vinegar...does anyone know what the vinegar does?...I've used it in recipes for meringues and I don't know what it's purpose is....

I added a 1/2 teaspoon salt for that nice counterpoint and...
 

1 teaspoon vanilla essence/extract

1.Lump all the ingredients into a heavy bottomed stainless steel saucepan and gradually warm it up to a slow boil, continue boiling gently for about 10 minutes and stir occasionally to prevent sticking and a truly grim burning smell.

2. Raise the heat slowly until a rolling boil is achieved...now here comes the imprecision...the recipe book said to take the temp to 284F but no way was my black sludge getting that hot, I KNOW it would have burnt so I watched the boiling until I could see that mixture getting thicker, stirring all the while to prevent sticking, and occasionally I dripped some of the liquid on a cool surface, in my case the stove top, and when it cooled quickly and could be picked up cleanly from the surface and squashed between my figures without sticking to them and feeling like some warm candle wax I, yes I, decided to take the sludge off the boil, stirred and cooled it til the bubbles subsided then poured it into a VERY well buttered 9" square metal container, at it's hottest the sludge reached about 225f on MY candy thermometer but don't go by that!!

3. Let the candy/sweets cool 'til the surface was setting and then pulled a sharp knife across the surface to mark it for breaking when the toffee was completely set.

When cold I removed said Treacle Toffee from the container and broke, somewhat unevenly I might add, along the marked lines and then wrapped some in small rectangles of unbleached greaseproof paper ready for the hoards of children who will not show at our house tomorrow evening because we live at the end of a quiet road where no-one ever comes!!! Maybe I'll take some into town tomorrow for the progeny of my deserving friends...assuming, of course, that it doesn't all get eaten by ghouls in the night!!

Happy Hallowe'en and November 5th all!!!