Tag: Halloween

Two homemade Halloween cocktails: the recipes – Italian Cuisine

Do you prefer "Dolcetto", the orange one based on orange soda, Ace and whiskey or "Scherzetto", the dark one with chinotto, lime juice and rum?

In this 2020 marked by the emergency Coronavirus, we will also spend the party of Halloween. If the latest decree passed by the Prime Minister does not allow us to leave the house, no one forbids us to celebrate with the family, even if only a few. The inevitable carved pumpkin, some tasty snack and something original to drink are all we need.

Homemade cocktail trend

According to the Observatory on Mixology conducted by Sanpellegrino drinks are more and more Italians who enjoy creating cocktails at home (41%) experimenting with new tastes (31%) or consolidating their habits on traditional tastes (28%), and with a tendency towards ingredients of natural origin. The uniqueness and particularity of the tastes guides the choice of the cocktail for 56%, with particular attention to the natural origin and the ingredients used in the recipe (29%), which translates into a preference for creations based on fruit and vegetables (53%), followed by those with aromatic herbs and Mediterranean fragrances (27%).
Great importance is given to the theme of sociability, amplified especially during the months of closure, which led us to rediscover its value. The timeless desire to sharing continues to confirm itself as the occasion in which we want to consume more cocktails, possibly together with friends in moments of leisure and free time (56%), but when this is not possible, for many of us a good cocktail also represents the opportunity to take one pleasure break in their daily breaks or to recharge after a long day (25%).

Two cocktails for Halloween

If you recognize yourself in this description of home mixologists, then here are the recipes by bartender Mattia Pastori to easily make two Halloween-themed cocktails at home.

Dolcetto: the orange cocktail

If orange is the color of Halloween, let's color our cocktail in this way too! Orange soda, Ace juice and a whiskey slightly peaty to add notes of smoke and warmth. For those who want to experiment and make their cocktail even more special, Mattia suggests adding a crusta made with charcoal and sugar to the glass. All decorated with gummy candies.

Ingredients

5cl of Sanpellegrino BIO Aranciata
3cl of whiskey (10 year old Glenmorangie Whiskey is recommended)
2cl of lemon juice
5cl of Ace juice (Pago recommended)
ice to taste

Method

Mix the lemon juice with the whiskey and the Ace juice. Filter into a high tumbler on the edge of which a crusta has previously been made (to do this, simply take some sweet charcoal and chop it into powder, add it to the sugar, wet the edge of the glass with orange juice and dip it in the powder to make it adhere ). Add ice, fill with 5 cl of Sanpellegrino BIO Aranciata and serve with gummy candies.

Treat: the dark cocktail

A drink that sees the use of chinotto, mixed with spiced rum and lime juice. The idea is to revisit a Cuba Libre through the use of a quality Italian drink and a rum that has sweet and spicy notes.

Ingredients

10cl of Chinò Sanpellegrino
3cl of Rum (Kraken Spiced Rum is recommended)
2cl of lime juice
candied orange peel
ice to taste

Method

In a tall tumbler, add the ice, pour the lime juice and rum, fill with Chinò Sanpellegrino and decorate with the candied orange peel.

Fingers of Witches, easy to prepare Halloween cookies – Italian Cuisine

Fear are frightening, and even a little impression! But they are delicious and very easy to make (even with the help of children)

Monstrous at the right point for the scariest party of the year, delicious and fragrant to taste, even dipped in a steaming cup of hot chocolate. Among the sweets to prepare for Halloween, the Fingers of the Witches cannot be missing! But how are they prepared? The recipe is very simple, here it is for you.

Fingers of the witches, the simple recipe

These cookies are made with shortcrust pastry and peeled almonds and the procedure for making them, as we have said, is really within everyone's reach, even the little ones.

Here are the doses and procedure to prepare a crumbly shortcrust pastry: 500 g of 00 flour, 300 g of butter, 200 g of granulated sugar, 5 egg yolks, salt, vanilla, lemon. Collect the flour and the cubed butter in a bowl, break the butter with your hands and mix it with the flour, you will get a dusty mix of tiny crumbs. Add the sugar, herbs and a pinch of salt and only then add the yolks. Knead with your hands until you get a homogeneous dough. Let the dough rest in the refrigerator for at least 30 minutes. Then before rolling it out, leave it for a few minutes at room temperature.

Line a baking sheet with parchment paper and piece by piece shape your witch fingers. Complete by affixing a peeled almond to one of the two ends of the fingers to simulate the nail. Bake at 180 degrees for about 15 minutes.

The delicious alternative with white chocolate

But to make these sweets even more delicious, an alternative is to prepare, instead of a classic shortcrust pastry, some white chocolate biscuits.

To make white chocolate cookies, you need 300 g soft butter, 250 g flour, 250 g starch, 150 g white chocolate, 125 g icing sugar, 10 g fresh grated ginger and 7 eggs.

Harden 5 eggs for 8 minutes, let them cool, shell them and get the yolks. Collect the butter in a bowl with the icing sugar and mix gently (if you use the mixer, mount the leaf hook), mixing carefully to make the mixture homogeneous. At this point sift the firm yolks and add them to the mixture of butter and powdered sugar, then also incorporate 2 fresh eggs. Continue to mix, then add the flour and starch, grated ginger and, lastly, the white chocolate, melted gently in a double boiler. All ingredients must be at room temperatureotherwise the melted chocolate risks congealing.

Now collect the mixture in a pastry bag with a flat nozzle (we used the serrated “chemin de fer” one) and distribute it in strips on a baking sheet lined with baking paper. Before baking, it's time for the final touch: place a peeled almond on one of the ends of the dough strips, to simulate the nails of the Witches!
Now you can bake at 160 ° C for 15-16 minutes. Once ready, take the Witches' Fingers out of the oven, let them cool and then … trick or treat?

For a very scary version!

If you want to make your sweets even more scary, use black cherry or cherry jam to simulate blood, brush the end that does not have the almond and if you want you can spread a little jam even where you are going to place the almond. If you are good, the effect will be truly impressive!

How to decorate fruit for Halloween – Italian Cuisine

Ghosts of bananas, mandarins-pumpkin, apples-vampire teeth: here is the perfect snack for October 31st, even for intolerant or vegan people

Autumn rhymes with … Halloween! And if supermarkets are filled with industrial sweets and candies of forms, colors and ingredients that inspire fear, we think about make fruit scary too. Ready for "trick or treat"?

Why make scary fruit at home?

That is because there are details dietary needs (children with intolerances or vegan families, for example), because we prefer limit the consumption of packaged products or because we simply want to give one looks different to the fruit of the snack afternoon, making ghosts, monsters and enchanted pumpkins is quick and easy. In addition, by making the scary fruit we will have the opportunity to entertain and pass the time with our children, perhaps during the first rainy weekends of the season.

Frightening fruit: the ghosts of bananas

Peel the bananas and cut them in half. Sprinkle them with a little lemon juice so as not to make them blacken. Melt del dark chocolate in a bain marie or in the microwave and "draw" on the bananas with a toothpick eyes and mouth wide open.

Tangerines-pumpkin

Cut some stalks celery in long and narrow rectangles. If you want you can also remove the celery filaments with a potato peeler before making the cubes. Peel i tangerines leaving them whole. Insert a rectangle of celery in the top of each mandarin: it will be the stalk of the pumpkin.

Apple-monster

Cut some green apples into four wedges and sprinkle them with del lemon juice, so that they do not blacken. With the help of a sharp knife, cut a pocket in each segment and stuff it with del peanut butter (pay attention to the ingredients, it should only contain peanuts). Then aligned inside the opening of the blanched almonds to recreate sharp teeth. If you want to make this snack even scarier, insert a Marshmallow into a toothpick and insert it on top of the dentures. Create the pupil by drawing it with del melted dark chocolate in a water bath or in the microwave.