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Ingredients:
very culture
has its own customs, traditions and rituals to celebrate/ honour the memories
of those who are no more. For someone who is new to them, many of these would
seem quaint or even difficult to understand.
I remember when I
was still in school and we were in Nigeria, there was a lunch party going on a
couple of doors away. People were dressed in their best, and there was a lot of
singing and dancing going on. Tables were covered with food, and the beer was flowing
with people toasting each other every so often. It was celebration at its best
and there was not an unhappy face to be seen.
Someone came over and invited us to join the fun, and we had to refuse simply because we didn’t eat non-vegetarian food nor drink alcohol. We did inquire what the celebration was all about, and were told that they were celebrating the passing away of their father a few days earlier.
Someone came over and invited us to join the fun, and we had to refuse simply because we didn’t eat non-vegetarian food nor drink alcohol. We did inquire what the celebration was all about, and were told that they were celebrating the passing away of their father a few days earlier.
I remember being rather non-plussed at
that, coming from a community where family members who pass away are mourned by
performing detailed and elaborate funeral rites over a period of two weeks,
followed by rituals every month for a whole year.
Later, we came
to understand the rationale behind it. The Yorubas (a tribe from Western part
of Nigeria) see death not as the end, but a transition from one life to
another. They also believe the best way to honour a loved one’s memory is by
celebrating the life they had lived on earth, and also the fact that they have
left all the hardships of this life which do not exist in the other one.
Christendom (mostly
Catholics) celebrates All Saints’ Day (or All Hallows) on the 1st of
November to commemorate Christian Saints. All Souls’ Day on the 2nd
November is the day when souls of departed ancestors are commemorated with
prayer.
The eve of All Saints’ Day, the 31st of October is celebrated as Halloween, which is a combination of harvest festival celebrations combined with activities like pumpkin carving, costume wearing, trick-or-treating, and decorations based on imagery of death and the supernatural. There is much argument about the origins of Halloween and that isn’t really of much concern to me.
The eve of All Saints’ Day, the 31st of October is celebrated as Halloween, which is a combination of harvest festival celebrations combined with activities like pumpkin carving, costume wearing, trick-or-treating, and decorations based on imagery of death and the supernatural. There is much argument about the origins of Halloween and that isn’t really of much concern to me.
With the passing
of time, many of these customs seem to have lost relevance and have no bearing
to the way they are now celebrated. None of this matters much to me and what concerns
me is the food part of Halloween. I cannot begin to understand the depiction of
the macabre and very realistic gore that I see everywhere like eyeballs, brains,
blood and bony fingers with claw-like nails! Maybe it has something to do with
the fact that I never grew up with Halloween.
I don’t
particularly like spiders or ghosts either but there is a cuteness factor tosome of them when they make an appearance as cookies or cupcakes, which I find
irresistible. Most of the year I tend to forget all about them, but come fall
and Halloween and it is almost impossible to escape them. This year I fell prey
to Spider Web Cookies!
A couple of
weeks back I was reading something when I came across “Spider Web Cookies”
which were not baked but mad in a skillet! Pretty much every recipe on the net
that I saw for this cookie was the same. And that they weren’t deep-fried but
made more in the manner of pancakes. They looked interesting and perhaps I was
pushed to make them because I have been on a baking hiatus for the past 3 weeks
ever since my new oven broke down!
They look very delicate but are easy enough to make. Piping them out might take a little time and with practise this becomes easier. These cookies do need your attention so don’t get started on them while multi-tasking is the call of your day.
They look very delicate but are easy enough to make. Piping them out might take a little time and with practise this becomes easier. These cookies do need your attention so don’t get started on them while multi-tasking is the call of your day.
It’s extremely
advisable to have a “squeezy” bottle (the kind you would use to decorate
cookies) to press out the batter onto the skillet. Piping bags or Ziploc bags
will not really work here as you need to control the amount of batter falling
out onto your skillet.
Taste-wise they’re somewhat like Achappam/ Rose Cookies, if you’re familiar with them. They’re crisp and slightly crunchy and disappear very quickly!
If you would like to know how I made my spiders, here's how. I melted dark chocolate with a little butter and then put it in a piping bag. I piped out a small circle with 4 legs on either side, onto aluminium foil and allowed it to set. Just before that I pressed half a Cadbury Dairy Milk Shot, piped choclate "eyes" on each, and then kept in the freezer to set. After half an hour, peel the "spiders" off the foil and decorate.
Taste-wise they’re somewhat like Achappam/ Rose Cookies, if you’re familiar with them. They’re crisp and slightly crunchy and disappear very quickly!
If you would like to know how I made my spiders, here's how. I melted dark chocolate with a little butter and then put it in a piping bag. I piped out a small circle with 4 legs on either side, onto aluminium foil and allowed it to set. Just before that I pressed half a Cadbury Dairy Milk Shot, piped choclate "eyes" on each, and then kept in the freezer to set. After half an hour, peel the "spiders" off the foil and decorate.
Spider Web
Cookies For Halloween
(Adapted from
Betty Crocker’s recipe)
3/4 cup all-purpose
flour
1/2 cup
granulated sugar
1/4 cup
vegetable oil
1/4 cup milk
1/2 teaspoon
vanilla
1/2 tsp chai
masala
1 egg
Powdered sugar
for dusting
Method:
Put all the
ingredients except the powdered sugar in medium bowl and beat with electric
mixer on medium speed until smooth. You can also whisk the batter by hand. Pour
batter into a plastic squeeze bottle with narrow opening. You can use a skillet
to make these cookies, but I prefer a griddle as the lack of sides makes it
easier to lift and turn the cookies with a spatula.
Heat an 8-inch
skillet or griddle over medium heat until hot. Grease it lightly. Work as
quickly as you can and squeeze the batter out of the bottle using uniform pressure,
to form 4 straight lines which intersect at right angles in the middle (like a
+).
Squeeze out another four lines in between these, so that you have 8
straight lines equally spaced from each the next all intersecting at the same
central point. You should have a 8-lined star shape. Now squeeze out 3 separate
sets of thin lines joining them all together to look like a cobweb.
Let it cook for
between 30 to 60 seconds till golden brown underneath. Carefully turn the “cobweb”
over with a wide spatula and let that side cook till golden brown. Remove the
cookie from the skillet and cool on a rack. The cobweb cookie will be soft when
you take it off the skillet but it will become crisper as it cools.
Bake the cookies
on ungreased cookie sheets at 180C (350F) for about 5 minutes, to make them
really crisp and crunchy. Let them cool and sprinkle with powdered sugar. Store
them in an airtight container, separating each layer with parchment paper.
This recipe
makes a large batch of one-time serve cookies.
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