Mysterious and spooky...
The bright sparks among you might have recognised that these are the first lines to the lyrics of the theme tune to The Adams Family. I used to love that programme with the whole of the weird and creepy family but I think my favourites were Lurch the butler and 'Thing', the dismembered hand. The theme tune also had me singing along and if, like me, you have now got an earworm, here is the link to YouTube so you can sing along yourself while you read this.
Yes, it's that time of year again folks when we all love to dress up in our scary costumes and frighten the life out of each other!
There are many traditions associated with Hallowe'en and I mentioned some of them in this post. I love to research the reasons why we have certain traditions and do the things we do at certain times of the year and a lot of it can be traced back hundreds of years. Many people these days think that celebrating Hallowe'en is an import from across the pond but did you know that it is, in fact, the other way around? It's the Brits who emigrated to America who took the tradition with them and while it died out here (although in recent years it has been making a bit of a comeback) in America it is still going strong. As I mentioned in my previous post, maybe we just preferred to celebrate bonfire night instead.
As with most festivals, Hallowe'en is celebrated with food, although with a slight twist as sweet delights are handed out to trick-or-treaters and party food is dressed up to resemble scary monsters, ghosts and ghouls. But the one food item that represents Hallowe'en more than anything else is perhaps the pumpkin. The shops are full of them at the moment, the intention being that you take one home and carve out your scariest face or pattern then put a lighted candle inside it to create an eerie glow.
My neighbour gave me a pumpkin the other day as he's been growing them in his garden and I've been debating what to cook with it. I saw in the newspaper recently that Hubbub, an environmental charity, has announced a campaign called Pumpkin Rescue, and they have put lots of pumpkin recipes on their website in an effort to persuade people to cook and eat the contents of their carved pumpkins. It claims that an estimated 18,000 tons of edible pumpkins are thrown away every Hallowe'en. And another article I read said that around eight million pumpkins end up in landfill every year. Not in my house though! I hate wasting food and I, too, have some great pumpkin recipes, including, of course, pumpkin cake 😊 I made some tasty pumpkin cupcakes a while back which I decorated with sugar scaries (like in the picture at the top of the page). The trick-or-treaters definitely got lucky that year. This year I might be making pumpkin pie cake, a recipe from the Pretty Witty Academy, where I am a member, or possibly the pumpkin cake recipe here as I haven't made it for quite a while. I've also got lots of apples in the garden so I'm going to have a go at the toffee apple cake in the Academy too. It sounds perfect for Hallowe'en or Bonfire Night.
Download a copy of my pumpkin recipes here.
Have a spooktacular Hallowe'en everyone!
I am currently taking orders for your Christmas cakes. Contact me here to order yours, email juliascake.eatit@gmail.com or private message the Facebook page.
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Julia