Monday, 2 November 2015

Halloween Party


This doesn’t have anything to do with any of the so-called themes of this blog, but since I’ve never cared about that before, why start now? ;)

Last weekend we celebrated Halloween – a fairly new custom in Finland. There are ancient Finnish traditions which are not entirely dissimilar... but fascinating though that topic is, this post is not about that. (I’m trying so hard not to digress!) Anyway. I thought I’d share some pictures with you.

I call our Halloween party the world’s smallest Halloween party, since there’s usually just three of us. Sometimes, however, we’ve received reinforcements as my sister-in-law has visited us, and she was able to join us this year too. (Apparently, we haven’t scared her off with our weirdness. Or goofy dancing to frighteningly awful Halloween party music.) That was lovely, we had a good time! :) And it also meant that I was able to delegate decorating to her and my daughter. This way, everything was organised excellently, as my sister-in-law has a good eye for things like that, being very creative, and I had more time to dedicate to the preparations in the kitchen, with my DH as my dutiful slave helpmate. In addition to obeying my “grate this”, “peel that”, “chop those” commands, he also carved our first ever pumpkin! It turned out beautifully, as you can see in the image at the top of this post (that would be the bigger pumpkin in the centre; the one behind it is actually a ceramic lantern).

We usually have some sort of icky/weird/funny foods for Halloween, such as these mice...


...but my daughter pities the poor mice too much and so I wasn’t allowed to make them. Instead, we had witches’ fingers (made of turkey sausages):



And Jack-o’-lantern shaped quesadillas:



Plus mandarin orange pumpkins and banana ghosts:



This candy platter with its skulls, worms, brains etc. delighted my daughter:



And for dessert, there was also a flourless chocolate cake (which I've made before) with a licorice spider (I should have put some thought into the web design and the spider in advance rather than just hastily throwing everything together... I mean, improvising... right before serving the cake, but, you know... you can’t plan everything. ;)) The cake turned out very moist and intensely chocolatey, and I received plenty of requests to make this cake more often... I believe the actual words were "all the time" :D


6 comments:

  1. Hurmaavan hirmuinen Halloween kattaus!
    Kaikkea olisin voinut maistaa...

    Kaunista marraskuuta!

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    1. Kiitos! :) Varpun kanssa piti suunnitella tätä juhlaa jo pitkään etukäteen... tarkkaa hommaa: ruokien täytyy olla sopivasti karmaisevia mutta ei kuitenkaan liian pelottavia/ällöttäviä.

      Ihanaa marraskuuta sinnekin! :)

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  2. Wow! You prepared a lot of dishes! And that pumpkin looks great, too! Congrats!!! :D It's nice to have assistants, huh?! :)

    The supermarkets here were selling a plastic version of the pumpkin that I considered for a while, though I thought it was a bit expensive... But in the end I just got some bats that glow in the dark... ;DDD

    i-reader

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    1. Hi dear i-reader and thanks for your comment! :)

      Most of the dishes were fairly easy to make and I had done some advance preparations (e.g. I baked the cake the day before) - and you're right, it's nice to have assistants! :)

      Oh, the bats that glow in the dark sound amazing! So cool. :D Did you have a Halloween party?

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  3. Yeah, they are cute - as opposed to scary!!! :D So, I like them. :)

    As for the party, no, we didn't have a halloween one. But I liked your idea of having a small party. It seems fun! Maybe I'll try it. ;)

    Have a nice evening.

    i-reader.

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    1. Oh, cute glow-in-the-dark bats - what could be better! :)

      We've had a Halloween party almost every year - first it was just two of us (my DH and I), then three. So it's a very small party! :D But sometimes we even invite the one guest! And yes, it is fun. :) My daughter loves it (she can't wait for Halloween!) and when it's a small party, you don't have to stress about the preparations. :)

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