Hope you all had a happy Halloween my friends. I did celebrate Halloween for the first time in a big way!.
Over here Halloween is not celebrated the way America and Canada do!. How can I put it...its more of a church thing, we call it "all souls day" and it usually starts with mass and then one visits the graves of family and friends that have passed to a better place. We have traditional food served on the day most famous are the "dead men's bones" This may sound creepy but I can assure you that these little fellows are very tasty! made out of pastry and almonds, then covered in white icing!.
.....YUMMMMY!!!
"dead men’s bones"
These different almond cookies or almond fingers are pretty hard to describe, because they don't look like your usual cookies.
On the 1st and 2nd of November, the island people celebrate the feasts of All saints and All souls.
On the 1st and 2nd of November, the island people celebrate the feasts of All saints and All souls.
This is a time to remember the loved ones who have now passed away. This remembering goes on throughout the whole of November.A cute but creepy sounding islanders tradition is to bake dead man's bones during this time.
Although creepy sounding, these are nothing but yummy pastries :) These cookies or almond fingers are basically little bone-shaped pastries filled with ground almonds.
Ingredients
(For the pastry)
(For the pastry)
160 grms (or 5.64 oz) sugar
240 grms (or 8.46 oz) margarine
480 grms (or 1 lb and 0.93 oz) flour
2 eggs (whisked)
1 teaspoon baking powder
One fourth of a teaspoon Vanilla essence
1 lemon rind
______________
(For the filling)
200 grms (or 7.05 oz) ground almonds
200 grms (or 7.05 oz) sugar
2 egg whites
Vanilla Essence
1 lemon rind
_______________________
(For the decorating)
200 grms (or 7.05 oz) icing sugar
Water
How to make the pastry
Mix the margarine with the sugar in a bowl, until the sugar melts. Add the eggs and the vanilla essence. Combine the baking powder and the lemon rind and add to the mixture, bit by bit. Mix well to form a pastry dough.
How to prepare the filling
Mix the ground almonds, sugar and lemon rind. Whisk the egg whites and add the vanilla essence. Combine and mix this with the almonds, sugar and lemon rind mixture.
How to make the "bones"
Roll out the pastry thinly and cut out several 15 cms X 10.5 cms rectangles.
Take spoonfuls of the almond filling and place down the middle of the pastry rectangles. Dampen the edges with water. Roll the pastry and form into wide strips. Close the edges and shape the edges (or try to) into legs bones! :) This is where the name of this recipe comes from. The cookies should end up looking like legs bones.
Mix the margarine with the sugar in a bowl, until the sugar melts. Add the eggs and the vanilla essence. Combine the baking powder and the lemon rind and add to the mixture, bit by bit. Mix well to form a pastry dough.
How to prepare the filling
Mix the ground almonds, sugar and lemon rind. Whisk the egg whites and add the vanilla essence. Combine and mix this with the almonds, sugar and lemon rind mixture.
How to make the "bones"
Roll out the pastry thinly and cut out several 15 cms X 10.5 cms rectangles.
Take spoonfuls of the almond filling and place down the middle of the pastry rectangles. Dampen the edges with water. Roll the pastry and form into wide strips. Close the edges and shape the edges (or try to) into legs bones! :) This is where the name of this recipe comes from. The cookies should end up looking like legs bones.
Baking Procedure
Put a baking sheet in the baking tray and place the “bones” in the tray. Do not put them too close to each other. Bake in a moderate oven for some 15 to 20 minutes.
Leave to cool before you decorate with icing sugar.
Put a baking sheet in the baking tray and place the “bones” in the tray. Do not put them too close to each other. Bake in a moderate oven for some 15 to 20 minutes.
Leave to cool before you decorate with icing sugar.
Decorating the Dead Men’s Bones
Melt the icing sugar in some water. (The texture has to be a bit thick.) Spread and paste the mixture on top of the bones.
Thanks for those who read this (Time post) hope you liked it and that you liked the tons of Images I uploaded and shared with you , But now Back to normality! I have shared a traditional dessert with you hope you like it!
Here is one of the games my friends and I played on the night!
Will you try and guess who killed count Dracula?
Go on read and solve the mystery!!
The
Murder
Count
Vaccula is dead!
He has been found lying
in his coffin stake driven right through the heart, his favourite cow
mooing in distress by his side.
Has his dark past finally
caught up with him just when he had changed his evil ways, eating
habits and name?!
Oh
no!
This is no ordinary case
of angry mobs of Transylvanian villagers marching with torches up to
the dark and dreary castle!
The clues point to
something more sinister....
What was Halloween Land
Candy doing in the Count’s pockets?
Who had prepared him a
sumptuous dinner of clotted cream, which the Count had not even
finished?!
Who was the younger
vampire seen leaving the castle in a fit of anger just before the
breaking dawn?
And was that wolf fur
found all over his cloak?
The
plot thickens!
The
Victim
Count Dracula had finally
seen the light!
Well....artificial
light...
With the increase of
blood borne diseases the Count has seen the error of his ways!
His (immortal) life was
not worth taking the risks any more just for a few drops of blood,
and besides, after a few hundred years, the leg work and stalking was
taking quite a toll on his knees.
In search of a new food
source the count discovered a wondrous white creamy substance
obtained from a strange yet gentle and somewhat smelly beast.
The villagers called it
MILK!
The Count could not get
enough of it!
He quickly set out to
revamp his Transylvanian estate.
The wooden poles once
used to impale his enemies where quickly substituted by pastures.
He set out to fill every
square inch around his castle with cows to provide him with fresh
milk every hour of the night.
To show that he had
indeed changed, the Count had his family name legally changed to
Vaccula!
The signs leading to his
castle were also painted over with Hempel paint so that they now
read:
“This
way to Milkvania”
The
Suspects
An autopsy was carried
out and blood samples taken from the Count himself revealed that he
had taken a heavy doze of Deadly Nightshade some time during the
night.
But was this so unusual?
The Count had always had
trouble sleeping after all!
Unfortunately an accurate
time of death could not be established...
He had been Master of the
Walking Dead for a few hundred years before this faithful night!
After some more
investigations, various witness accounts and a whole series of
forensic tests, Scotland Graveyard detectives were finally able to
narrow down the list of suspects to 4 shady individuals.
Jack Skellington
Cat Woman
Little Red Ridding Hood
...and...
Viscount Ramin
Mangia-on...and on and on!!!
But what motive could
they possibly have?
And how could all 4
individuals be placed at the scene of the crime?
Dare
you untangle this web of mystery and unmask the true identity of the
murderer?
Jack
Skellington
The Pumpkin King is
loosing his popularity!
He won the Halloween
Elections just by the width of a thread
....from a spider’s
web!
There’s no guessing who
his arch nemesis in all this was....
Count
Dracula!
Thanks to the success of
the Twighlight Saga, the world of humans has recently been more
receptive towards the idea of vampires, as crazy teenagers all around
the world stare dreamy eyed at every effigy of Edward Cullen!
This caused the Election
Scales in Halloween Land to tip in favour of the Count. It was only
at the last minute that Jack managed to snatch his victory and earned
the right to open the celebrations on Halloween
Night!
He still had to repay
Miss Lee and Mr. Manson for their very valuable contribution to his
campaign!
But just when he had
thought that the worst was over,
Sally
refused to be his Halloween Queen!
Later, after the opening
ceremony on Halloween Night had ended, he found her ogling over the
TV at the Salvatore Brothers!
So enraged and saddened
was he by this that he spent the rest of his special night alone,
reading “50 Shades of Graves”, desperately hoping that he would
find the magical spell that would bring
him back his Sally
But could he really
compete against the Count, win back Sally and keep his title of
Pumpkin King for yet another year?
Jack feared that his
boyish charm and class would not be enough!
Talented though he may be
Jack
did not want to take any chances...
With his pockets stuffed
full of candy he put on his top hat and left without saying a word to
anyone!
Little
Red Ridding Hood
Little
Red is in financial trouble!
With
less endorsement being offered to Little Red to appear on the cover
of the latest fairy tale book or to grace the lid of some lucky
10-year-old’s lunch box, it has become harder for her to keep up
with Fairy Tale Land’s life style for the rich and famous.
With
Grandma now unable to manage her affairs due to ill health (the poor
dear was never the same after she started hiding in wardrobes and
hallucinating about wolves in drag trying to gobble her up whole)
Little Red was handed down the deeds to Grandma’s cottage (or
luxury chalet) in the Swiss Alps and became the executive director of
Granny’s Swiss Chocolaterie!
Things
had started to finally look up...
That
is until this Vampire craze came along!
“If
only they could all die out...just like the Dodo”,
thought Little Red as she sat on her favourite fur rug in front of
the fire with a goblet of hot cocoa in hand.
As
dark shadows danced across the room from the flickering flames, she
noticed that the cleaning lady had failed to clean the rug properly
last time and the red splatters shone brightly against the silvery
fur.
It
was then that an idea crossed her mind....
Perhaps,
there was a way out of all this!
Little
Red put on her best red velvet cape and set off to Milkvania!
Cat
Woman
Cat
Woman was jealous!
But
not just jealous...she was as green as a goblin with jealousy!
What
was Little Red doing at the castle in the middle of the night?
What
had she and Count Vaccula been talking about all night?
His
dinner was getting sour!
And
she had gone to such great lengths to prepare it for him!
“Business”,
the Count had said, last time she had came over; the girl was simply
trying to get rid of a few cows from the Chocolaterie!
Rubbish.....
Everyone
knew that Little Red had already signed off her Gran’s chocolate
factory to Willy Wonka Enterprises!
Cat
woman was sure that the Count was up to his old tricks!
And
she, the silly fool, had actually believed that he had changed!
They
had so much in common...the midnight strolls and the romantic candle
lit milk suppers, she had believed that he was the one!
But
as an old Transylvanian saying went...
A
vampire may lose his fangs but not his vices!
With
an angry hiss, she stormed out of the castle and went in search of
something
long and pointy to sharpen her claws against,
leaving the Count to finish his dinner alone.
Viscount
Ramin Mangia-on
Viscount
Ramin Mangia-on is a young vampire with impressing political
prowess...or so he likes to think....
His
latest aspiration was to have a “Bill of Vampirical Rights”
presented to the Transylvanian Parliament.
The
Bill of Rights would aim to protect vampires all over the world by
abolishing the use of garlic, silver implements, wooden stakes and
sunshine snacks in public places after sun down!
The
support of another popular, powerful, and preferably rich, vampire
would surely get his bill right on the Prime Minister’s desk!
Viscount
Ramin knew just the right vampire for the job!
But
all did not go as Mangia-on had planned!
The
Great Count Dracula just wasn’t interested!
And
even if he was... he had not yet forgotten that, at the last blood
bath the count had hosted at his castle a few years ago, the young
Viscount had complained about every single victim served to him!
One
had too much cholesterol, the other was too anemic and he just could
not digest common clotty O Negative! Why hadn’t the Count presented
a delicate, young AB Negative to his guests?
Having
his carefully selected choices so heavily criticized in front of his
guests was an insufferable offence to Count Dracula, Master and
Father of all Vampires, Prince of Darkness, etc etc...
He
would never forgive Viscount Ramin for this!
He
adamantly refused to back up Ramin’s political campaign and sent
him out of this castle without as much as a penny to support a
miniature flyer on a match stick!
Viscount
Ramin, left the castle in a fit of anger!
The
old fool! How dare he laugh at him and his ideologies!
But
he would get his way in the end!
The
Viscount always did!
pictures by Hotei
.jpg)
