Relax, it's totally kosher

I'm worried that I'm turning into a bit of a neat freak. It's worrying because I have built an entire persona around being a bit shabby around the edges, a bit sloppy in my personal administration. I use the clothes horse as extra storage space and there is a sludgy layer of decomposed receipts, tickets and tissues from last winter's cold at the bottom of my handbag. And about eight lip balms! So that's where they all went.

But I've been sober for too long. And now mess bothers me. An unplumped sofa is irritating. This very morning, I got up and got dressed and couldn't - actually couldn't - put on a slightly wrinkled sweater (fresh from the clothes horse) until I'd given it a quick iron, despite the fact that it's just some size 18 navy blue thing from Gap to go over a size 14 ugly striped tube dress I've been wearing for the last 6 years, (it feels like).

It's a shame that this new manic cleanliness has coincided with the too-huge-to-move stage of up the duffness. As I spot a cobweb in a corner of the living room, I flail for a good five minutes like a tortoise on its back to get off the sofa in search of a duster. And I thought pregnant women were just putting it on! No.

But I don't want to be a neat freak because I don't really like neat freaks, although they're better than hopeless slobs. But my identity! It's my identity. It's like alcoholics and smokers who can't give up, not because they're actually addicted, but because they truly believe it's the most interesting thing about them.

So I thought the best thing to do would be to invite a kosher Jew round for dinner. If there's anyone who appreciates a bit of manic housewifery, it's a kosher Jew.

My friend X lives and works primarily among the goyim, (that's you and me), and doesn't get to eat meat very often, and especially not at other people's houses, because buying kosher meat isn't like buying organic meat, it's like buying magic meat or contrabrand and the purveyors don't really want to sell it to you.
They hide their shops away in the middle of nowhere and shut, on Fridays - when you need it most - at lunchtime. But they're pretty nice people, otherwise, and when you run in shrieking "Give me that fucking chicken!" three minutes before they lock up for the weekend, they sell it to you, and some chicken livers for good measure.

Because of the list of rules and regs about kosher cooking, which thrilled the new neat-freak me, and the heavy dose of the religious about proceedings, I stopped thinking it was my old friend X coming for dinner, and started worrying that it might actually be God himself.

And an Old Testament God is quite a scary prospect. He's not really into turning the the other cheek and lending you his tamborine to sing kumbaya; he's more about raging down off the top of a mountain, shaking you by the neck and screaming "What the fuck do you think you're doing?!" before sending a plague of boils through your letterbox.

So as I cast my eyes over my Shabbas table with its candles and covered bread (don't ask - too complicated) and white tablecloth, it all looked so ritualistic that I got a faint sense that I was about to be sacrificed.

See what I mean?

But then X arrived and said a couple of prayers and my feeling of doom disappeared and we all fell on the chopped liver like we hadn't seen meat for a fortnight, which X actually hadn't.

The pot roast chicken I did with this late-purchase kosher bird was exactly the same as Nigella's chicken, so I won't go through all that again,




...but here's a picture anyway


but chopped liver is a thing worth describing.

Obviously, unless you're kohser, you can use any chicken liver for this.

Chopped liver, for 4

1 packet chicken livers from Waitrose, which I think comes in at about 300g
1 large onion
3 eggs
some parsley if you like
a lot of salt and pepper

1 Put your eggs on to boil for 10 minutes. You might have some clever way of boiling eggs, in which case, do it like that.

2 Chop your onion and fry gently for at least 15 minutes in some vegetable or groundnut oil.

3 Wash the livers and take off any gross or green bits. Then grill hard, both sides, until they start to blacken a bit. Yes, I know this is counter-intuitive but it's how it's done, okay? This won't take more than about 4 minutes each side.

4 Roughly chop 2 of the boiled eggs and the livers and put them, with the onions, in a food processor. Pulse or blend until you get a kind of mortar-ish, spreadable rubble. You might have to do this in two batches and you might have to loosen it a bit with some veg or light olive oil.

5 Add salt and pepper until it tastes nice. I added a lot, probably in the end about three or four big pinches of salt and nine or ten turns of the pepper grinder.

6 Turn out onto a serving plate thingy, then chop up the last boiled egg finely and sprinkle over the top. You can also sprinkle over some parsley if you like

7 Eat with challah, which is that plaited bread. It's very sweet and you can make an excellent bread and butter pudding with the leftovers, says X. And don't forget the pickle! Haimisha cucumbers. Yum.

Amen.

Mrs Coren's Chicken Pie

Even better, if possible, eaten re-heated the next day

A lot of people like to say that they don't do things by halves. "I'm an 'all-or-nothing' person" they say.

I don't know about you, but I usually take that not to mean that they're the kind of person who, once they've started the washing up, washes up until everything looks like new and then clears the draining board, dries everything up, puts it away and then wipes down all the surfaces.

Rather, I usually take it as a euphamism for them liking to get very shitfaced. More shitfaced than anyone else, in fact. Not half shitfaced, but fully shitfaced. And they end up not doing the washing up at all because they're too shitfaced, or hungover, to do a "proper" job. "I'm an all-or-nothing person," they'll say, from the sofa, a glass of Alka Seltzer dangling from a pale and trembling hand.

I'm not like that. I like doing pretty much everything by halves. I find that six or seven halves add up to some wholes. People who don't do things by halves usually end up not doing anything at all, whereas I rage through to-do lists like Tas of Tasmania, doing everything a bit rubbishly. But it gets done. In the end.

There are exceptions, of course, to my general slapdash attitude. And this chicken pie is one of them.

Most pies are a thing that you do with the leftovers from a roast. Shepherd's pie - leftover lamb; Cottage pie, leftover beef; Chicken pie - you get the idea - made to go further with pastry and vegetables. But people don't really do that anymore. They put any leftovers in sandwiches and buy ground lamb, ground beef or chicken pieces if they want to make a pie.

And if you want to make a chicken pie fast, you can. You can use breast meat and bought puff-pastry. I reckon you could  have it done, start to finish, in an hour. Maybe an hour and a half.

But I kind of think, what's the point? I find those kinds of pies a bit thin and insubstantial - the precise word is "jejune", if you're interested - you know what I mean? The breast meat is bit gritty and not right for a pie and bought puff pastry is all very well... but the point of any pie is not that it's quick, it's that it's rich, comforting and a little bit of an effort.

If you haven't got time to make a chicken pie properly, then maybe leave it until you do have some time and, instead, whip up a perfectly servicable spanish omelette, or a chorizo-and-bean stew or - hell - bacon and eggs.

This chicken pie takes a while and this recipe is very long, because you have to make the rough puff pastry, the white sauce and roast up the chicken seperately, then assemble it. But it really isn't hard and it really is worth it. If you find yourself with a slow afternoon, make some of the pastry - or the entire thing - and freeze it if you want to cut out a stage or more.

I'm using Hugh FW's rough puff pastry for this and not Delia's quick flaky pastry because I find grating frozen butter incredibly horrid.

Please don't be freaked out by the long list of ingredients - they're all very readily available.

Mrs Coren's Chicken Pie
serves 6

1 quantity of Hugh Fearnley-Whittingstall's Rough Puff Pastry (see below)
4 chicken drumsticks
4 chicken thighs
6 rashers streaky bacon
A handful of mushrooms - any you like
1 leek
2 stalks celery
1 medium onion or two small ones
3 sprigs thyme
2 bay leaves
4 cloves garlic
1 quantity white sauce:
(50g butter
some plain flour
600 ml milk)
salt and pepper
1 glass shitty white wine
1 beaten egg
vegetable oil - or dripping if you're feeling a bit Mrs Beeton

1 Toss your chicken pieces, peeled garlic cloves and HALF the herbs in oil, salt and pepper and then put in the oven at 180 for 1hr 10min to roast. Give them a jiggle round once or twice during cooking.

2 Make your pastry thus:

- 400g plain flour
- 200g lard, cut into 2cm x 1cm chunks
- large pinch salt
- about 200ml iced water

Sieve the flour into a bowl and sprinkle over the salt. Chuck in the lard lumps and toss until all coated with flour. Then add the iced water until you've got a firm-ish dough that's not to wet and sticky. Although if you do splosh in a bit too much water just sprinkle over some more flour to compensate.

At this stage it will look ghastly - all bits hanging off and massive lumps of lard - and flour everywhere. Don't worry, this is normal. Turn out your scraggy dough onto a floured surface and roughly shape into a fat rectangle.

With a floured rolling pin, roll the pastry away from you in one direction until you get an elongated rectangle. When the pastry is about 2cm thick, fold the furthest third towards you and the nearest edge away and over the other, like you're folding a letter.

Now turn your bundle 90 degrees to the right and roll it away from you again. You should do this a minumum of 4 times, but preferably 6 or 7. You'll find that the pastry becomes better-looking as you do this. Keep count of your turns, though, because if you over-roll the pastry it'll become tough.

Keep it well-floured. Then stick it in a freezer bag or in a bowl in clingfilm and put in the fridge for an hour.

2 Chop up your onions, leek, mushroom, bacon and celery all small-ish and fry very gently with the remaining half of the herbs in some vegetable oil or dripping for at least 15 minutes. After this time, throw in your glass of shitty wine and turn the heat up full until the wine has bubbled away - this takes about 3-4 minutes. Take the pan off the heat and set to one side.

3 Make your white sauce by melting 50g of butter in a large-ish saucepan (it needs to be large because you are going to add the chicken and vegetables to it later). Then take the pan off the heat and add enough flour to make a butter-and-flour paste. Then with the pan still off the heat, add a long sloop of milk and stir until the paste and the milk are mixed in with each other. A few tiny lumps at this stage don't matter.

Put the pan back on a medium heat and add the rest of milk. Stir or whisk until the sauce thickens but don't bring it to the boil. Once the sauce has thickened - this takes about 4-5 minutes - take the heat right down and season with salt and pepper until it tastes nice. Add cream if you want but not creme fraiche as I did the other week because it makes it go strangely sandy.

4 By this point, give or take, your pastry ought to have had enough time in the fridge and the chicken ought to have roasted up. If it's not quite ready, read Grazia for a bit. Or clean up the kitchen, if that's not the lamest suggestion I've ever made. But I've started clearing as I go, although I really despise myself for it.

When all your various bits are ready, strip the meat off the roasted-up chicken and chop up into chunks. It's your call whether you put the skin in or not - I do. Then add this and your cooked veg - fish out the bay leaves and thyme stalks - to the white sauce. Give it all a stir. Taste. Cry if it's horrible. (But it won't be.) Add more salt and pepper now if you want. If you feel like it, maybe a spoonful of Dijon mustard or some finely-chopped parsley.

Pour this mixture into whatever dish you're going to bake your pie in. Then remove the pastry from the fridge and roll it out to about 0.5-1cm thick. Or more, if you really like pastry. If you're feeling really pedantic, don't press too hard otherwise it will shrink on cooking.

Brush around the edges of  your pie dish with beaten egg to help the pastry stick and then lay the pastry on top. Trim away the excess (ball it up and put in the freezer for another project) and press down round the edges of the pie dish with the flat edge of a fork to make little lines. Brush the whole of the top with beaten egg and make a 1cm slit in the middle of the pie to let steam escape.

Put in the oven at 180C for 40 minutes. If you've rolled your pastry very thick, it will need a bit longer, maybe an hour.

After all, you're not a person who does things by halves.

Jamie's jerk chicken

Sorry for the appalling picture. I simply don't understand my camera and it occasionally has a kind of spontaneous fit and if it agrees to take a picture at all, it's a bad one, despite the machine costing several hundred pounds (of someone else's money).

So last night I made this out of Jamie's 30-Minute Meals because I LOVE JAMIE OLIVER in the way only a trembling, slightly tearful frightened pregnant lady can. Every time I turn to my recordings on the V+ box there is just a long list of Jamie Oliver programmes. It's quite embarrassing when my husband's in the room because it's like he can see into my head and it's going: "Jamie Oliver Jamie Oliver Jamie Oliver Jamie Oliver." But I think my husband's got a weeny little crush on JO as well so that's okay.

This jerk chicken is very exciting, but I think there might be a small mistake in the sauce quantities. I only think, though, I'm probably wrong. But it specifies 6 tablespoons EACH of vinegar and rum, which makes the sauce quite wet, and it gets wetter on cooking, which I'm not sure can be right.

Feel free to make this as it stands, or to do what I would do if I were making this again, which would be to add only three tablespoons each of the vinegar and rum to make six tablespoons of wet stuff in total.

A little bird, okay it's my friend AC... who actually is quite little and a bird so very apt description... says that she thought this sauce was a bit wet, too - and something else Jamie did with plums was also wet. So, it's still a mystery, but at least IT'S NOT JUST ME.

[N.B - I made this again the other day with half-quantities of the wet stuff and it turned out much, much better - so do that, I'd say.]

The ingredients list below is exactly as it is in the book. The method is a bit different.

Jamie's jerk chicken

4 chicken breasts
4 spring onions
small bunch fresh thyme
3 fresh bay leaves
ground cloves
ground nutmeg
ground allspice
6 tbs rum (!) - I say use only 3
6 tbs cider/red wine vinegar (!) - ditto
1 tbs runny honey
1 Scotch bonnet chilli (I used 2 red chillies from Waitrose, one seeds in, one seeds out - worked v well)
4 cloves garlic

1 Turn your oven to 220C. Oil a griddle pan, or a normal pan if you haven't got a griddle, and get it roasting hot. Cut the chicken in two at the fattest part so it's still in one piece at the thinnest part but then divides like a sort of cloven hoof (does that make sense?). This helps it cook quicker.

Put the chicken skin-side down in the hot pan and then leave it alone for about 5-6 minutes. Don't poke it about because you want the skin to go crispy and a bit charred and you've got a better chance of that happening (this goes for steak, too) if you just let it get on with it.

2 Chop up the spring onions a bit and put in a whizzer with all the other sauce ingredients. If you haven't got the spices ground, as I didn't, smash about half a teaspoon of each in a pestle and mortar and grate in a big pinch of nutmeg. If using ground, take a big pinch of each spice.

3 Pour your whizzed jerk sauce into an oven dish. Then remove the chicken from the pan and place skin-side up in the pool of sauce. Drizzle over, if you like, an extra tablespoon of honey, more salt and pepper and sprigs of thyme and rosemary if you want it to look nice. Jamie's advice, which I always now follow (because it's love, after all) is that you should smush oil over herbs before scattering them on top of a dish like this so that they cook rather than frazz.

4 Cook on a high shelf for 15 minutes.

Hazelnut Truffles (aka Nutella Balls)

I’ve actually mentioned nut butter balls before, in one of my very first posts, when I was mulling over potential ideas for wedding favors. I briefly described a basic general process for making candy balls from any nut butter (I have seen peanut, almond, cashew and macadamia nut in Wegman’s). Since I made Nutella balls this past weekend for a party, I thought now would be a great time to go back for a recap, especially since I tweaked the recipe a bit for a richer truffle.

Nutella is a kind of gianduia, that is, a chocolate paste containing about 30% hazelnuts. The generic name comes from Gianduja, a marionette featured heavily in the Italian Carnival (the festival season immediately preceding Lent).  Gianduja the puppet (whose name literally means something like ”John the pottering man”) is portrayed as the archetypal provincial Piedmontese character, honest, loyal, with a love of good wine and pretty girls. Typically wearing a tricorne hat and brown coat trimmed in red, Gianduja is the official “King of the Carnival” in Turin, the capital of Piedmont. Gianduja the chocolate was also an invention of Turin, by the chocolate company Caffarel in 1853 (Caffarel, incidentally, still exists and is now a subsidiary of Lindt). In 1946, Pietro Ferrero, also of Piedmont, formulated a solid block of “Pasta Gianduja” for retail, followed closely by a soft “Supercrema” version in 1951. In 1964, Supercrema got a new formulation and name: Nutella; and today there are nearly 200,000 tons of it produced every year!

I’ve been making these balls for years, inspired by the multiple recipes for peanut butter balls that are floating around the internet (and I’ve made peanut butter balls as well -- delicious). Most peanut butter ball recipes call for peanut butter, confectioner’s sugar, butter, and either Rice Krispies or graham cracker crumbs. I myself prefer graham cracker crumbs, but both are tasty. I’ll provide my recipe for these Nutella balls first, then also provide a more traditional recipe (that will also work for peanut butter) afterwards.

I changed up the Nutella ball recipe this time around, because I decided that Nutella already has enough sugar in it, I didn’t want to add any more. I didn’t want them to be overpoweringly sweet, I wanted the richness and the chocolate-y goodness of the Nutella to be able to shine, so I cut out all confectioner’s sugar, and halved the butter, with great results.

The workflow of the Nutella balls is very simple. First, you melt a stick of butter. Then you combine it with a 26.5 oz jar of Nutella and 2 cups of graham cracker crumbs (I used regular graham cracker crumbs because that is what I had on hand, but chocolate graham cracker crumbs would also be fantastic in this recipe). You mix it up until it is well incorporated (you can use a mixer if you’d like, I did it by hand).

Then, take a #60 scoop and use it scoop the filling, and form balls. Place them on a wax paper-lined cookie sheet, and pop them in the freezer for about an hour.  Because of the loss of the sugar, these balls needed a little longer in the freezer to firm up enough to be dipped.

Then, take a bag of the dark chocolate candy coating melts, and melt them in the microwave. When they are fully melted, mix in 3 capfuls of vegetable oil to thin out the coating. Dip all of the balls, the coating should be thin enough to smooth out as you tap the excess off of the balls. Normally I drizzle on a contrasting color afterwards, but I didn’t bother this time.

These balls are very easy to make. The longest time commitment is waiting for them to firm up in the freezer but I think the results are well worth it. The balls turned out rich and creamy, not too sweet, definitely decadent. The graham crackers add a nice little crunchy change of texture to the fresh Nutella balls as you eat them, although the crunchiness will go away as the graham cracker crumbs have a chance to be moistened by the rest of the filling.

 These don’t have to be stored in the fridge, although you might want to consider it (or at least chilling them before serving them) to keep the filling firmer. I haven’t tried this with peanut butter yet, but I think it should work fine, especially if you are using a typical peanut butter (i.e. not a natural peanut butter) that already has sugar, such as Skippy. The recipe listed after this one, the “original” recipe that I used to use, definitely works great for peanut butter, and would probably be the best one to use if you are using any natural nut butters that don’t have a lot of added sugar.

 Hazelnut Truffles (Nutella Balls)

Ingredients

• 1-26.5 oz jar of Nutella
• 1 stick of butter, melted
• 2 C graham cracker crumbs (chocolate or regular)
• For candy coating: 1 bag of dark chocolate candy coating wafers; 3 capfuls of vegetable oil

Directions

1. Combine butter, Nutella, and crumbs until well mixed and uniformly moist
2. Using #60 scoop, scoop out filling and form into balls
3. Place balls on wax paper-lined cookie sheet, and freeze for 1 hour
4. When ready to dip: melt candy coating wafers, and thin with 3 capfuls of vegetable oil
5. Dip the Nutella balls in the coating, tapping off the excess, and place onto wax paper-lined cookie sheet to harden
6. Garnish as desired.

Yield: 4 ½ dozen

Here is the original recipe I used to use, which contains sugar. Again, this would be great for regular peanut butter, natural peanut butter, or any other natural nut butter that doesn’t already have a high sugar content:

Ingredients:

• 2 C nut butter
• 2 sticks of butter, melted
• 2 C confectioner’s sugar
• 2 C graham cracker crumbs OR 3 C Rice Krispies

Directions:

1. Combine butter, nut butter, sugar and either crumbs or Rice Krispies until well mixed and uniformly moist
2. Using #60 scoop, scoop out filling and form into balls
3. Place balls on wax paper-lined cookie sheet, and freeze for 1 hour
4. When ready to dip: melt candy coating wafers, and thin with 3 capfuls of vegetable oil
5. Dip the balls in the coating, and place onto wax paper-lined cookie sheet to harden
6. Garnish as desired. 

Pizza Part II

Although the Cheat's Pizza I wrote about a few weeks ago was a revelation, I kind of wondered what part it could play in my life. What problem does it solve? Great for one or two people, but impossible in larger quantities - and isn't the whole point of making a pizza, at home, from scratch, to give other people a home-made pizza experience?

And I was also curious about Jamie Oliver's pizza dough, which a lot of people say is nice, but I wanted to see it for myself. And it is fantastic - obviously. You sacrifice nothing: not taste, nor texture.

So I made up a quantity of this dough and rather than dithering about frying it in a pan and then putting it under a grill, I found a flat baking sheet that could fit both in my oven and under the grill and decided to go with that. The trick is to briefly bake the pizza base in the oven before you put the ingredients on top and then finish it off under the grill - it stops the whole thing going soggy.

I used a 12in x 17in baking tray, which gives enough pizza easily for 4 people, or enough for about 6 hungry children. Wow that makes me sound like a really nice person, like I might be making this for a bunch of 7 year-olds. Fat chance.

This recipe makes enough dough for TWO 12in x 17in pizzas. I recommend freezing the extra for another pizza moment as making the dough is the only faffy bit.


500g very type 00 italian flour
OR
400g very strong plain bread flour + 100g semolina
1/2 tablespoon salt
1/2 tablespoon sugar
7g dried yeast
325ml warm water
2 tablespoons olive oil

1 Sift together the flour and salt and make a well in the middle.

2 Mix together the water, oil, sugar and yeast. Stir and leave for 3 minutes. Then pour into the flour and mix round with a fork. When it comes together, turn it out onto a floured surface and knead for 4-5 minutes until it's springy and cohesive

3 Put it on some kind of floured surface, your choice what - dust with more flour, cover with a tea towel and leave somewhere warm for an hour.

4 After that time, pummel the dough out a bit on a well-floured surface and knead it round for 4-ish minutes. Then divide this ball into half and roll it out very, very thin to about the shape of your baking sheet - it doesn't have to be a precise rectangle. Make sure the pizza base is well-dusted top and bottom with flour so it doesn't stick to anything.

5 Put this to one side for 20 minutes. Now turn your oven and your grill on to the highest they will go and make some tomato sauce (1/2 can chopped tomatoes, 1 clove garlic, 1 spring basil, 1 glug olive oil, large pinch salt and whizzzzzz in a whizzy machine) and chop up all your toppings now because you'll want to scatter them quick quick over your pre-baked pizza base.

6 Your kitchen by now ought to be worryingly hot from the heat blasting out of your grill and oven. Slide your baking sheet into the oven, as close to the top of the oven as you can get it, for about 3 minutes.

7 Remove from the oven and scatter ideally with semolina or you can use flour. Now carefully lay your well-floured pizza base into the now-boiling-hot baking sheet. This isn't that easy. I recommend picking the dough up with a rolling pin and then laying it down on the sheet and sort of rolling it on - if that makes any sense. Anyway, just do it the best way you can see how and if you find a foolproof way, do share.

8 Stick this back in the oven for about 3-4 minutes, just until the edges of the dough are begining to very lightly colour and the dough feels light and not sticky to the touch.

9 Remove and pour over the tomato sauce, spread it around and add the mozzarella and whatever else you want to it. Then shove back in the oven for about 6-8 minutes until the dough is crisping up and going dark brown around the edges. Finish off under the grill. Produce for lunch to screams of awe.



I can't quite believe that I've got this far without launching into a huge insane rant about what a terrible mood I'm in. Like I'm angry like I used to get at my old job. I just filed a piece and got an email back along the lines of "Thanks. Could we make a few changes..." and there followed, I promise you, about 18 things they wanted to change. And they're shite changes. But BIG changes. And I've written it now and going back over it seems like being made to eat the dinner you didn't want last night for breakfast. And I want to tell them to go and fuck themselves, right in the bum, but I can't, because it's that kind of shitty attitude that got me into this mess in the first place.

But, you know, it's only pride. And they probably know what's best for them. And at least they asked rather than just changing everything themselves to make me sound like someone else was using the family braincell when I wrote it.

I would say that being able to write whatever I want here and not being asked to change things has spoiled me - but being asked to change things has always pissed me off no end. Unless it's the Mail, of course, in which case you just smile and think of the money.

Zombie Brain Cupcakes (Easy Halloween Cupcake #2)

Zombies. Rotten reanimated corpses stumbling hither and thither in search of brains and other various human body parts on which to feed. I love them for it. Zombie movies, zombie games, zombie merchandise, I devour them all with a ravenous hunger that rivals any denizen of the undead. Unlike the other usual suspects of Halloween, such as vampires, witches and mummies, who can simultaneously be bad while exuding both sex appeal and style (don’t think a mummy can be sexy? Then you haven’t seen Arnold Vosloo), zombies seem to exist for no other reason than to kill. They are remorseless, they are ruthlessly terrifying, they are…not at all appetizing. And, at least for those zombies of George A. Romero’s fertile imagination, they are actually quite gross. I don’t want to see that on a cupcake, although there are some who might. But, there are ways to create a zombie-themed confection without resorting to decomposition.



One easy way is to use something like zombie hand picks, which can easily be put on an Oreo crumb-covered cupcake to simulate a zombie rising from the dead. The way described in this post is to make “brain” cupcakes, which would also feel right at home at any mad scientist gathering.

But first, a scientific interlude about zombies and their quest for

Skip to below if you just want to get to the cupcakes!

We’ve all seen zombie movies. We all know the vague anecdotal references to zombie-like trances that voodoo-ish practices can supposedly cause. The question is, can they exist? And the answer is…what do you mean by zombie? There are two main classes of zombies, as I see it. Those that are truly dead, and those that are mindless.

Radiation. Apocalypse. Mystery virus. Or, as is the case with many zombie movies: cause unknown. The catalyst in any classical zombie outbreak is some precipitating factor that inexplicably reanimates dead tissue. The dead rise and inevitably being to hunt humans.  Can it happen?

Negative. When I say dead, I mean really dead, not just clinically dead. In the laboratory, scientists have been able to revive dogs who had been clinically dead for up to 3 hours. But I’m not talking about someone whose heart stopped and was revived. I’m talking someone who is truly no more…has ceased to be…is expired and gone to meet his maker…is a stiff...bereft of life…metabolic processes are now history…kicked the bucket…shuffled off his mortal coil…run down the curtain and joined the bleedin' choir invisible…an ex-parrot, er, I mean ex-person. Yeah. That won’t happen. Without getting too scientific, muscles need energy to move, in the form of ATP. ATP production requires functional metabolism on a cellular level. Muscles also require input from the brain for coordinated movement. Reflex movement, no. But the type of coordinated movement that is necessary for walking (much less hunting) would be impossible for a dead brain. Nevermind that in order to hunt, zombies would have to retain some level of higher cortical function. Yes, in the confines of a fantasy movieverse, one could make a tenuous rationale for undead zombie metabolism and movement that can hold up well enough for two hours, especially if people want to believe, but as far as having to worry about undead hordes, it won’t be a problem. Although, if you are interested, a Harvard psychiatrist named Dr. Steven C. Schlozman has written an interesting mock journal article examining the zombie brain.

However, another important tenant of undead zombie lore (and the zombie mythos in general) is: if you get bit (and aren’t completely devoured on the spot by zombies) you’ll become a zombie yourself. For Romero zombies of the undead variety, it isn’t always clear whether the transformation occurs because the person died and death itself is the only requirement for becoming a zombie, or because there was some sort of contaminant in the blood, either a toxin or a virus. Which segues into the second form of zombie: living people who act like zombies.

Whether by voodoo, toxin, or pandemic illness, some zombie outbreaks are caused by living people who only act like the undead, without higher brain functions. Such scenarios encompass the Haitian “zombies” as well as the “zombies” from stories such as 28 Days Later and I Am Legend. Is it possible?...Maybe…

Voodoo Zombies
According to West African and Haitian traditions, zombies (or zombi) are dead people that can be revived by a sort of shaman called a bokor. In Haiti, zombie creation is accepted as a reality, so much so that there are laws enacted by the Haitian government outlawing it. In the 1980s, the work of a Harvard ethnobotanist (someone who studies how different cultures use plants), Dr. Wade Davis, brought Haitian zombies to worldwide attention when he published books claiming that he found evidence that bokors induced a zombie-like mindless trance through the use of chemical agents, namely tetrodoxin that had been isolated from pufferfish. Dr. Davis’ hypothesis was that the combination of tetrodoxin and dissociative drugs first induced a state of animated suspension which the person believed was death, followed by re-awakening post-burial inducing a psychotic state (perpetuated by continual medication from the bokor) that convinced the person he was a zombie, and making him susceptible to control. As evidence, Davis highlighted the now-famous case of Clairvius Narcisse, who claimed that he had “died” in 1962 and was revived by a bokor and forced to work on a sugar plantation for 18 years as a slave. However, there are some gaping scientific holes in Dr. Davis’ theories, starting with the fact that tetrodoxin can cause paralysis and unconsciousness, but not the trances that Davis describes, and certainly not for years. Many in the scientific community also doubt that any person, bokor or not, would be able to keep someone in a constant hallucinogenic trance for years.

Far more likely, the reported zombie cases in Haiti are a combination of people being accidentally buried alive and suffering several psychological trauma as a result, or of mistaken identity due to a combination of a wandering mentally ill person identified by mourning relatives. A case study published in Lancet examining “zombie” cases in Haiti (Lancet 1997; 350:1094-1096) used DNA testing to determine that most “zombie” cases were actually cases of mistaken identity by a bereaved family. In only one case was the “zombie” found to actually belong to the family that claimed her, with a quick examination of her tomb revealing that it was empty. She was diagnosed as having suffered anoxic brain injury from being sealed in the tomb, which accounted for her zombie-like trance – oxygen deprivation destroyed her higher brain functions. That particular case is a tad sinister since it was clear that 1. She was buried; and 2. Someone probably removed her from her tomb, because her tomb was filled with rocks. The scientists who investigated left the door open to the possibility that some person (call him a bokor or whatever) might very well have poisoned her to simulate death, and then retrieved the body later. The possibility for that to happen to other people does, in fact, exist.

Zombie Infection
So what about a plague upon mankind that reduces its victims to mindless and/or crazed hordes, a la 28 Days Later? These “zombies” are definitely alive, but no longer in control of their faculties. Could humans become exposed to or infected with some disease that alters their brain chemistry to such an extent that they can exhibit zombie-like behavior? It might be unlikely, but it isn’t technically impossible.

When neurotransmitters become aberrantly regulated, they can have a severe impact on behaviors such as aggression. Pump rats full of serotonin, and they attack each other more easily than they would otherwise. Throw them enough out of whack in response to a disease, for a large enough segment of the population, and theoretically it is anyone’s guess what will happen.

As far as viruses go, there is already at least one virus out there that mucks up brain chemistry, causes hyper-aggression, and is transmitted through a bite: rabies, which proves that aggression-causing viruses do exist in nature. Given the rate of expected new virus discovery in the coming decades (Proceedings of the Royal Society B: Biological Sciences, 275 (1647), 2111-2115), plus, the constantly expanding pool of zoonotic viruses (viruses that are coming from animal hosts to infect humans), who knows what challenges new viruses might bring. Don’t misunderstand, I’m not saying it will happen, I’m just not saying it can’t.

There are other infections that can cause gross behavioral changes. Take Ophiocordyceps unilateralis, which is a fungus that infects ants, turning them into so-called “zombie ants”.  Basically,  this fungus can only thrive under certain exact conditions, and when it infects an ant, it hijacks the ant’s behavior to the point where the ant seeks out leaves in those exact specific locations where the fungus can grow, and when it finds them, it clamps down on the leaf and dies. Once that happens, the fungus spores in the ant’s body sprout and disperse seeds. If the ants are moved to even slightly different locations after death, no spores sprout, so this induced behavior is extremely specific and solely designed to provide the fungus with the correct environment. Or how about Toxoplasma gondii, for instance. This parasite lives the majority of its life cycle in the gut of cats, which is where it wants to be most of the time. But when it sheds its eggs, those eggs are eaten by other critters such as rats, where they hatch. But the brand-new T. gondii wants to get back to cats pronto, so it alters the behavior of infected rats in one vital way: Normally, rats have a panic attack when they come into contact with cat urine, which is an evolved response to keep them out of areas where cats live and patrol. Buuuut...infected rats lose this anxiety when they smell cats, so they just waltz into cat-infested areas, presumably to get eaten. Humans can also be hosts to T. gondii, and there is some (controversial) evidence that this parasite can also alter behavior in humans. There might even be a link between T. gondii infection and schizophrenia, although this is not completely understood, and is a matter of much debate. But the point is, there are parasites out there that can hijack behavior in a variety of different ways, even when those ways go against every tenet of self-preservation. Just because it hasn’t verifiably happened yet for humans doesn’t mean that it never will.

Now, are these living zombies true zombies according to genre purists? If you have hordes of crazed people hunting down humans and chomping on them, do those distinctions even matter?

Whew! That was a long interlude! Sorry, I’m a biologist, and this stuff excites me. But now on to the

These cupcakes are pretty easy, they are more decoration than anything else. I injected heated jam into them to make them look “bloody” (check out my Vampire cupcakes to see more details on the actual injection). But, you can fill them with anything you want, or nothing at all. Some cherry pie filling from a can would work well mixed with some almond extract, or some red Jell-o to make a poke cake. If you are using cherry pie filling, or any filling that involves cutting a plug out of the cupcake for filling, you can use any type of batter you want. If you are relying on something soaking into the cake itself, like jam or Jell-o, I recommend a yellow or white batter so it is easier to see.

So, step one, bake those cupcakes!

Step two, fill them or poke them, or whatever you are planning to do. Like the vampire cupcakes, I used a syringe to fill these. And like I mentioned in my previous post, if you remove the needle part too fast, the jam will come gushing back out of the hole, so easy does it. Although, these can look a little messy. They are brains, after all.

Then, make some icing, and dye it a light grey color or a light beige color with some gel. I used a basic buttercream (recipe below) but you can use any icing that will stand up to being piped, and that you can dye grey.

You are going to be piping either with a round tip (#12) or with a bag with a ½” snip taken out of the corner. Mentally divide your cupcake surface into halves. Then, in one sequential motion, draw a line down the center of the cupcake, and bring it back up around the edge, tracing a semicircle. Without interrupting the flow of icing, fill down the empty semicircle with a curving zig-zag motion (see diagram below).

This is one hemisphere, so repeat the mirror image for the other half of the cupcake, and voila, brain!

To make it a little more gory, you can dab your bloody filling along the brains. I have a feeling this would work better with the Jell-o than with the jam. As thin as the jam was, it was still a little too thick to run down the sides of the icing in the way I was hoping for. But it didn’t turn out too badly, although it was so hot in my apartment that my icing started to melt.

These cupcakes only take a little extra effort, but they are a great way to pull together a theme. If you have more time, they could be done a heck of a lot nicer than I did, but they get the job done either way. They definitely qualify as on e of the easier Halloween treats!

Basic Vanilla Buttercream

Ingredients

• 1 cup unsalted butter, softened
• 3 1/2 cups confectioners' sugar
• 1-3 teaspoon milk
• 1 teaspoon vanilla extract
• 1/8 teaspoon salt

Directions
1. Beat softened butter until fluffy, then add in the sugar and salt.
2. Add in vanilla extract, and milk one tsp at a time until you reach desired piping consistency

Vampire and Slayer Cupcakes (Easy Halloween Cupcake #1)

Like my previous Halloween post on Quick Creepy Treats, this post and the few following it are not actual recipes, but ideas and directions for assembly of some quick Halloween-themed treats, in this case, cupcakes. But not just any cupcakes…vampire cupcakes…and slayer cupcakes!

In other words, 

Welcome to the Hellmouth. Or my kitchen. Either way. Now, vampirism is a cumbersome and complex topic, full of history and pop culture references. For just a bite (get it?) of vampire lore concerning that most famous of all vamps, keep reading, or scroll down to the pics to get back to the Buffy baking!

Vampires, those eternal creatures of the night that feed on the life forces of the living, make an appearance in the legends of nearly all of the world’s cultures, from the Lilitu of ancient Persia and the Lamia of ancient Greece, all the way to the Loogaroo of the Caribbean (as well as several varieties not brought to you by the letter “L”). Stories of the undead who drain the life essence of humans exist on every continent, but perhaps nowhere so famously as in Eastern Europe, the home of the infamous Dracula.

Even before Bram Stoker came along, vampire mythology had a long tradition in eastern Europe, most notably amongst the Slavs and Romanians. Although he was not the original source of the vampire legends, one man’s legacy provided the basis for our modern classical concept of vampires as described by Stoker: Vlad the Impaler.

Vlad the Impaler, aka Vlad Tepes, was born in Transylvania, but he did not technically reign there. Vlad III was actually the Voivode of Wallachia, a principality that is part of modern day Romania. Voivode is a uniquely Slavic title that combines the authority of a prince with that of a supreme military commander. Vlad inherited the voivodeship from his father, Vlad Dracul, so named because he was a member of the Order of the Dragon (from the Greek: Δράκων (Dracon)). Because of this, Vlad III became known as Vlad Dracula, literally “son of the dragon”.  But there was something prophetic about this moniker, because the Romanian word drac has a meaning of its own: devil.

Now, Vlad did not start out as a torturer and mass murderer. He started out as an eleven year old boy who had been sent as a political hostage to the Ottomans as a show of loyalty between Vlad’s father and his tenuous Turkish allies against the Hungarians. Such things were common during this time period, but Vlad was badly mistreated by the Ottomans over a period spanning 5 years, which sowed the seeds of his implacable hatred of the Ottomans later in life. At the age of 16, Vlad’s father was murdered by the boyars (aristocrats) of Wallachia, who had allied with the Hungarians, while his older brother Mircea was blinded and buried alive. So there was quite a bit of revenge mixed into Vlad’s bloody story. Everything came to a head on Easter Sunday, 1457, when Vlad finally had his revenge: the older boyars and families were all impaled, while the younger boyars were enslaved to rebuild Poienari Castle. None survived. Over the rest of his reign, Vlad systematically wiped out the entire aristocracy of his country, who were not only associated with the murder of his family, but who also had a long history of undermining the Voivode’s authority.

Vlad III’s reign itself was not so very remarkable in the context of a 15th century ruler who was trying to consolidate power – he killed everyone opposed to him or who he thought might pose a challenge to his authority in the future, including both his own people and those of rival nations.  But what made Vlad so interesting, and what undoubtedly caught Stoker’s attention, was his unusual method of killing and torturing. As he did with the boyars, Vlad preferred impalement as his execution method of choice, with a side of torture thrown in: the stake was gradually driven into the bodies – so gradually that it could take days for the victim to die. And Vlad didn’t stop with the boyars, he impaled tens of thousands of people, many of whom were prisoners of war.  In 1462, Mehmed II, ruler of Constantinople, was said to have retreated back to Ottoman lands with his army in fear and disgust when he encountered more than 20,000 Turkish prisoners of war staked to the ground outside of Vlad’s capital city.  And while tales of his cruelty and massacres are still infamous in adjacent areas and found their way into many local vampire legends, in Romania he is still lauded as a national hero for his war against the Ottomans.

However, the real-life Dracula didn’t lend much to Stoker beyond his name, location, and method of execution: a stake through the heart. Which brings us to:

The contributions to pop culture of Joss Whedon notwithstanding, the most prevalent vampire hunter lore again comes from Eastern Europe, especially from Romani oral traditions (not to be confused with Romanians, Romani are Gypsies). According to Romani legends, the offspring of a vampire and a mortal, dhampir, had the ability to see and identify vampires, and could thus protect their villages from them. They also had the extra advantages of superhuman speed, strength and agility, making them well equipped to throw down with vampires.  There are rough counterparts to this concept in several Balkan and Slavic areas, some half vampires and some not, but all endowed with extra abilities to combat the supernatural. However, unlike modern fictional portrayals of vampire hunters, the hunters of legend were usually identifiable by the fact that they were grossly malformed.

And now, back to our regularly scheduled baking!

 These cupcakes are so simple, I really think I gave them their own post in order to have an opportunity to write about vampires and somehow incorporate Buffy into my baking. But in any event, as with the previous Halloween treats I posted, this is the simplest version of a theme. Depending on the amount of time you want to spend, you can get proportionally more elaborate than I did here.

This is what I used.

First, you bake some cupcakes. Easy, right? I used a Sprinkles vanilla cylinder because I had it on hand, but you can make any kind you want. But, give some forethought to how you want to fill these cupcakes and the method you are going to use to fill them. If, say, you are going to cut a plug out of the cupcakes and fill them with some red colored cream filling, or some cherry pie filling mixed with almond extract, then the cupcakes can be whatever flavor/color you want. If you are going to be like me, and poke some red stuff (ie warmed jam or Jell-o to make a poke cake) all over the cake, chose a light batter so that people can see the red soaked into the cake.

Next, you fill the cupcakes. Now, you don’t have to fill them, but it really looks nice to have some red stuff in there for when people bite down. Like I said, you can make your own cream (recipe at end) and dye it appropriate colors, or you can use some chopped cherry pie filling from a can mixed with some almond extract. If you do either of these methods, cut a plug out from your cupcakes and fill them.

Heat until the jam is thin.

Now, rather than this, I took an easier route with these. I decided to try poke cupcakes, which usually means that you poke the cupcakes with a toothpick and pour something thinned out over them to be soaked down into the cake. The most common thing to pour over is Jell-o, either strawberry or cherry. But I went one step easier, and used raspberry jam heated (carefully!) in the microwave. If you do this, be sure to buy jam and not preserves, because preserves don't melt in the same way.  It was fast, easy, and made the vanilla cupcake taste rather like a thumbprint cookie. But, instead of just poking, I actually used a syringe to inject the cupcakes with the jam, since it was still a little thicker than Jell-o (the same syringe as in my Mini Tortuga Rum Cakes, if you want to see detailed syringe pictures).  

I'm not trying to be spooky with this pic, I didn't realize the flash was on...
Don't mind my messy table...

The syringe sort of looks like an overgrown reverse mosquito, forcing blood in rather than sucking it out. And I learned something very important. When you do this, with jam at least, withdraw the syringe tip slowly, otherwise the jam will come gushing back out of the hole like this:

This isn't tragic, they are Halloween cupcakes after all. If this happens, just be a little more careful when you frost, because you want the icing surface to be as white as possible. You'll notice that I poked anywhere from 1-3 holes per cupcake. I think 2 holes worked out ideal. If you are going to use Jell-o, you can still use the syringe, but it will have an easier time soaking into the cake than the jam, so you can just poke with a toothpick and let the liquid soak in.

Now you can frost. You don’t need to do much with the frosting itself, so you can use white icing from a tub if you wish, or a basic buttercream, or you can slap on a Swiss meringue buttercream or 7 minute frosting…really whatever you feel like, as long as it is white. When you choose your frosting, go ahead and frost your cupcakes smoothly, not in a terribly thick layer.

Now, you poke holes in the frosting and add “blood” and this is really where it helps to have a red filling that can double as blood on the top of the cupcake. Make 2 holes in the frosting that look like a vampire’s bite mark, and fill them with your “blood”, dribbling blood away from the holes. Voila! Easy vampire cupcakes. I rushed them a little bit, so they aren't as pretty as I would have liked, but you get the general idea...

My apartment was unseasonably hot, and my icing started to melt!

And then when you cut it open, there is a nice amount of bloodiness in the cake:

In this particular cupcake, I managed to line up the bite puncture wounds perfectly with the jam in the cake. It looks cool, but it wasn't intentional, and isn't necessary. The only way anyone would notice is if they split the cupcake down the middle anyway.

To complete the theme, because I was determined to tie it in somehow, I made some “slayer” cupcakes, settling on a "stake through the heart" theme: assemble them the same way as the vampire cupcakes up through the frosting part. After the layer of white frosting is down, take some of your frosting and dye it red. Then, pipe a heart onto the top of the cupcake, and put a stake through it (in this case, a pretzel stick). 

If you think the cupcake is a little ambiguous, you can always write “Stake the <3” on them instead of just the heart, like I did. And if you want, you can ground up some Oreo “ashes” for decoration around the edges, because you, my friend, have just dusted a vamp.

Is this sophisticated decorating? Not at all. Marshmallow fondant would probably make a nicer surface than the icing, but I just didn't have the patience. Ditto for the heart. A chocolate-dipped pretzel rod would have made a better Mr. Pointy. I could have dribbled the jam a bit more artistically. But you don't have to go nuts for a simple theme. After all, everything doesn't need to look like the Cake Boss did it. I don't know about you, but my baking time is always competing with other things. When I made these, I was simultaneously baking and decorating cupcakes, getting dinner together, assembling a Halloween costume, and reading articles for work. But these cupcakes work with my schedule. They are easy, cute, and get the point across. 

This recipe is actually a Twinkie filling copycat recipe that has been floating around the internet for years in many different places.

Ingredients

• 1-7oz jar marshmallow cream2 tsp hot water
• 1/4 tsp salt
• 1/2 C shortening
• 1/3 C powdered sugar
• 1 tsp vanilla

Directions

1. Dissolve the salt in the hot water and allow it to cool down to room temp
2. Whip all ingredients except the salt water until fluffy
3. Slowly add the salt water and whip well until fully combined and fluffy
4. Add dye gel if desired