Halloween this year is a rather last minute affair. That’s unusual for us. With our Irish background, we adore the festival and usually go slightly over the top with it. But there have been too many trips to Limoges recently and various other events cropping up so we’ve been short of time. However, we did prepare our Halloween snakes in advance. I mentioned the honey locust seed pods we collected in Limoges before. Rors got busy with his paints and turned them into super scary snakes.

But even at the eleventh hour there are easy things you can rustle up. Decoration wise, coffee filter monsters don’t take long. All you need are coffee filters, of course, and an imaginative youngster.

Now food. Pasty bones are easy to rustle up. All you need are a roll of pastry, a sharp knife and a vague knowledge of human anatomy.

Take a hot dog sausage and the above knife and you can create an octopus, jellyfish, ghosty sort of monster. Here’s Ruadrhi’s.

Next come Caiti’s slightly more detailed one.

We’ll also be eating guinea-pig brains (walnut halves) and llama poo (maltesers – but brown M&Ms do just as well) with our tea. The main dish is flayed face. My version is based on this one at instructables.

Take your Halloween mask …

 

Turn it over and line it with clingfilm and pop eyes into place (blue M&Ms or olives etc).

Now add the skin. I use slices of jambon cru, but any sort of ham will do.

Once fully lined, add your filling. I use fried lardons (cubes of bacon) mixed with sweetcorn, grated cheese and cream cheese. Shove anything in you like! I used to put peanuts in too, but that was a bit of a salt overload, what with the bacon pieces.

Completely fill your mask mould, press the filling down with a spoon and then pop the lot in the fridge for a couple of hours to firm up. To serve, you turn it face side up and remove the mask and clingfilm. It usually comes out pretty well and tastes delicious. There’ll be an after photo on my next blog, or later tonight if I remember to update.

I’ve just realised that I haven’t made any witches’ eyeballs yet. These consist of peanut butter which you add roughly an equal weight of icing sugar to and then mould into a round shape. Shove a coloured M&M in for the pupil and there you are. If you have time, you can dip the whole thing, apart from the pupil, into melted white chocolate which makes it more eye-like.

So I must head to the kitchen to get those made. I hope some of these last minute ideas have been useful if, like us, you’re not very organised this year!

Happy Halloween!