Review Recipe: Clare Latimer | Halloween recipes | Witches' heads

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The Review - FOOD AND DRINK - Cooking with CLARE
Published: 30 October 2008

Clare Latimer's
Halloween recipes

Witches’ heads and Spider's web cup cakes

Witches’ heads

THIS can either be made with cherry tomatoes if you are handing them out to children at the door or as little snacks, but you will have to buy baby ice cream cones which can be hard to come by.
Alternatively you can use large tomatoes and make it a fun main course.
If your children do not like cottage cheese you can stuff the tomatoes with tinned tuna, egg mayonnaise or just grated cheese mixed with some crème fraîche.

Ingredients
6 tomatoes
1 tub cottage cheese
Salt and freshly ground black pepper
Handful chives, chopped
125g spaghetti
Little olive oil
12 sultanas
Little butter
6 ice cream cones.

Method
Cut the tops off the tomatoes and discard. Put the cottage cheese into a bowl and season with salt and pepper.
Add the chopped chives and stir well.
Cook the spaghetti in boiling salted water for about eight minutes or until soft. Drain and toss in a little olive oil.
To make up the witches’ heads, place the stuffed tomatoes upside down on a plate and put some spaghetti over the top so it looks like hair hanging down from the “head”.
Put a tiny bit of butter on the sultanas to “glue” them on the edge of the tomato so that they act as eyes and a nose (three in a triangle shape).
Place a cone upside- down on each tomato and you will now have the witches starring at you!

Spider’s web cup cakes
These cup cakes are great fun and if you feel like it you can decorate them with homemade marzipan spiders, using liquorice sticks for their legs, and then place one on each cake.
You can make them a day or two in advance as they keep well in their paper cases.

Ingredients
50g dark chocolate
80g butter
1 tbsp milk
200g self-raising flour
½ tsp bicarbonate of soda
80g light brown sugar
50g caster sugar
1 egg
142ml carton crème fraîche.For the topping:
100g dark chocolate
100g white chocolate

Method
Preheat the oven 200C / 400F / gas 5.
Line a muffin tin with 12 paper muffin cases.
Break the chocolate into a bowl with the butter and milk. Put in the microwave on medium for 30 seconds or set the bowl over a pan of gently simmering water.
Stir until the chocolate has melted and set aside.
Mix the flour, bicarbonate of soda and both sugars in a bowl.
Beat the egg and crème fraîche in another bowl and pour this on the flour mixture and add the melted chocolate.
Stir gently and then spoon the mixture into the cases to about three quarters full.
Bake in the oven for 15-20 minutes or until the cakes are well risen.
Leave them in the tins for a few minutes, then lift out and leave to cool.
To make the topping,
take two piping bags, or cut very little off the ends off two clean plastic bags.
Break the dark and white chocolate into separate bowls, adding a little water, and melt in the microwave on medium for 30 seconds or over a pan of hot water as in the first part of this recipe.
Stir, and when melted and smooth, put the dark chocolate in one bag and the white chocolate in the other.
Spread the dark chocolate over each of the little cakes, letting it run slightly over the edges. Then pipe four circles of white chocolate on top.
Using the end of a sharp knife, drag through the circles at regular intervals, from the centre to the edges to create a spider’s web effect.
Decorate with spiders if using.

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