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

A flourless / gluten-free chocolate cake

Okay, this is not a baking blog, but since this is about chocolate... ;) I found this recipe for a flourless chocolate cake some time ago and it sounded delicious... now I got a chance to bake it. My daughter kindly assisted me, which means we needed a fairly uncomplicated recipe, since a six-year-old's enthusiasm greatly overpowers her patience and baking skills. ;) This recipe is perfect in that regard: the cake is very easy to make, just a few simple ingredients, and there isn't much mixing or whipping involved.

And the cake turned out really good: dark and intensely chocolatey, with a somewhat gooey centre and firmer edges. I would have preferred it slightly less dense, so if I give it another go, I'll try and see what happens if I reduce the time it spends in the oven. I almost always end up tweaking any recipe at least a bit, but this time, I only used just a little less sugar.

The cake isn't very tall, but if you top it with whipped cream or something (we used a sort of very light whipped custard, Flora Vanilla), it works out beautifully. A chocolate frosting would also work, but on the other hand, the light vanilla fluff gave a nice contrast to the heavy, dense chocolate cake.

And just in case you'd like the recipe in English:

125 g chocolate (definitely recommend the darker varieties!)

125 g butter

175 ml sugar (I used about 150 ml)

3 large eggs

125 ml unsweetened cocoa powder

Butter the sides of a round (20 cm) cake pan and line the bottom of the pan with baking parchment. Melt the butter and chocolate. Add the sugar while mixing with an electric mixer. Add the eggs, mix well. Add the cocoa powder. Beat the mixture for about three minutes. Pour into the pan and bake at 200 C for 20-25 minutes (I took it out after 20 minutes). It'll look like it's not done yet, but as it cools, it will settle.