A feast fit for the dead, undead and undecided

I shouldn't be entirely surprised that the food preparation for Halloween took two full days. I had expected a cooking extravaganza and I am quite thankful I had planned so many dishes that could be made in advance, or I would have been making a panicky dash to Co-op by Saturday afternoon. Plus, I'd learnt my lesson from the Mad Hatter's Tea Party I held in the summer, where I was still buttering bread for the sandwiches as the first guests arrived! Although it was hard work, everything worked out brilliantly and I had a lot of fun!

The culinary onslaught began on Thursday evening when I made another batch of the Witches Fingers (see earlier post) and continued into Friday when I did the bulk of the prep work - cooking a huge pot of chili and another of vegetarian ghoulash. I also marinated both the chicken and the vegetables that were to be threaded on skewers and grilled on Saturday, and made the cupcakes ready for decorating.

Saturday morning saw me decorating the cupcakes with orange buttercream on the chocolate cakes, and a spider web frosting on the pumpkin cakes. Not the neatest job ever, but I liked how they looked once I'd stacked them on my black wire cake stand and decorated them with orange and green physallis (that came from the greenhouse!). Next out of the dessert factory was a slab of sticky toffee pudding, and the most delicious pumpkin pie. I'd never made one before, and was glad I attempted it this time, because it was easy and yummy.

A batch of garlic mushroom, and spinach and cream cheese tarts finished off the cooking marathon and then I just had to arrange it all, following my little plan. Working out what each dish was going in, and where on the table, so far in advance might have seemed a bit obsessional at the time, but I was glad I had it worked out on the day - one less thing to think about! I'd also made some spooky little signs on toothpicks to go on the food earlier in the week, so I just had to stick these in and I was done. Phew! One huge glass of wine thoroughly deserved and needed!

The purple satin fabric made a brilliant tablecloth and gave the table a funereal air, I left the fold marks in it and it put me in mind of the quilted lining from a coffin! Inexpensive black casserole dishes made great cauldrons to hold chili and ghoulash. The purple fabric was strewn with black plastic flies, centipedes and cockroaches.

Chocolate cupcakes with orange buttercream, and spiced pumpkin cupcakes with a spiderweb frosting, looked great studded with peeled physallis fruits from the garden.

Little cup of slime anyone?

The sign for the dessert display reads 'Indulge if you dare'. Little glass bowls held extra toffee sauce for the sticky toffee pudding, and double cream for the pumpkin pie. I kept finding little plastic mice, that I had decorated the edge of the pie stand with, swimming in the cream, which was a brilliant but unplanned finishing touch!

A gruesome display

I made this grim display on top of one of the front room cupboards. It's just out of sight as you enter the living room and walking round the corner to the dining room it really stops you in your tracks! I think it's going to attract a lot of attention on Saturday, each exhibit has it's own identification card, with details of the grisly occupant of each vessel. I gathered a collection of glass vases and jars and grouped them into a nice formation before I started thinking about what was to go in each, one of the larger ones is sitting on a footed glass dessert bowl to give it extra height. The acorn shaped glass dome at the front is the shade from a dismantled vintage light fitting.

Brains and ears and lungs - oh my.

Here's what horror is in each - along with it's not so gruesome everyday description. All the specimens are suspended in a solution made with a few granules of instant coffee and a couple of drops of milk for cloudiness. It's the suggestion of shapes that make the display work, so each item was carefully judged and coloured until the vagaries of outline and texture just remained.

UNDEAD BRAIN - A cauliflower. To get it into this narrow necked vase I had to carefully slice it in two, close to the base, push each piece in separately, and then join them again using cocktail sticks.

VAMPIRIC HEART - A fennel bulb. I found it looked more realistic with the green outer layer removed, so I shaved this off with a potato peeler. The bulb I bought had five sprouting shoots, but I chopped the middle one out to leave just four 'valves'.

LEFT LUNG OF A WAILING BANSHEE - An old sponge. If you have one that's getting to end of life for car washing, then that's perfect as it's likely to be more holey and withered. I shaped the sponge to get rid of any harsh corners or straight edges. The addition of a few strands of red embroidery thread poked here and there into the sponge gives the impression of tendrils of blood seeping through tissue.

SEVERED EAR - Quite literally a rubber ear. I was working on a Halloween magazine this summer, and this treasure was sent in for possible covermount ideas. We deemed it far too creepy, and it was rejected. I rescued it and had it in my drawer till Halloween, it is just perfect for this display!

UNIDENTIFIED SPECIMEN - This is possibly the simplest yet most effective. It's a worn out foam cloth (the kind you buy to wipe worktops) again rescued from the car washing bucket. The weird growth attached to it? Is the strange twisty thing that you might sometimes find in the centre of a red pepper, tied on with a strand of muslin that resembles bandage.

ENTRAILS - noodles, tagliatelle and spaghetti! Boiled briefly to soften, and that's it!

BOLETUS LUPINUS (wolf mushroom) - Mushrooms. I was hoping to find a nice fat toadstool in the woods to place under this sinister dome, but dark evenings left me running out of time.

The whole display was a lot of fun to assemble, even though it left me feeling a little like Sweeney Todd in the process, and the kitchen looking like a science project gone haywire.

Thanks to Neil, official photographer, and scariest costume winner,  for use of the last photograph: Left Lung of a Wailing Banshee and,  foreground, Unidentified Specimen.