A Halloween lunch with a watermelon monster

In our house, Halloween is a time when death is uppermost in our minds.  We held a lunch yesterday, as we do each year, to remember the day that our twin boys, Alex and Ian were stillborn.  It used to be a quieter affair but their younger sister now treats it as another birthday party.  And Halloween is becoming the theme each year.  Sylvia loves the fun food and so would her brothers.

When we decided to make broomsticks with pretzels, it seemed a good opportunity to revisit the white chocolate and pretzel spider webs we made a few years back.  The ones we made back then had dodgy chocolate spiders in the middle and really wobbly webs.  Sylvia jumped at the suggestion.  She even had a go at piping the chocolate webs.  As you can see above we had mixed results.

Some of the webs were far better and I have been able to include an updated photo on the original post.  However we had a problem with the chocolate not setting.  It set in the fridge or freezer but not at room temperature.  So I left them in the freezer overnight (the fridge being too full).  Sylvia decided to take them out this morning.  I had balanced them carefully but a 6 year old was not to know this.

When she opened the door they fell out and shattered all over the kitchen floor.  We were able to rescue and snack on a few pieces but most of it ended up in the bin.  I was a bit sad but the white chocolate is so sweet that perhaps it was for the best to admire but not eat too much.

We were busy tidying the house and cooking leading up to the lunch.  The roses in the garden are all beyond their best.  Sylvia was keen to find some flowers.  We managed to pick a few that were less overblown then the rest.

Sylvia was very keen that we made cheese and pretzel broomsticks like last year.  I had memories of making them by wrapping swiss cheese around a pretzel and tying it with a spring onion.  It was fiddly.  This year we found the string cheese that other people have used and it was so easy that I was able to leave Sylvia to do it without supervision.  We did leave out the little detail of the chive or spring onion tied around it but there was much else to do.  The string cheese was much easier but I think we all preferred the taste of the swiss cheese to the plastic stuff.

E was quite keen on a jack o lantern themed food.  I had chickpeas leftover from using aqua faba (more on that later) and decided to make pumpkin dip.  I served it in a ramekin with a face cut out of nori.  (Those with a keen attention to detail might notice that I forgot the nose.)

One of the dishes I was most excited by was the watermelon monster.  I was originally inspired on pinterest.  I bought an 8kg watermelon the day before and was quite proud of it.  Sylvia was fascinated.  Unfortunately it was really too heavy for her.  So when she picked it up to cradle it like a baby she dropped it.  The watermelon split and bled on my rug.  Boo hoo!

I am not a huge fan of watermelon and only bought so much watermelon just for the fun of doing the monster.  So it seemed like a waste.  I put the huge watermelon in the fridge, shuffling lots of food around to fit it.

I avoided the huge cracked watermelon in the fridge as long as I could.  Once I took it out and gave it a searching look, I discovered I had been unduly pessimistic.  No, my watermelon would not look just like the picture but it would do very nicely as a scary monster with lime halves and dried cranberries attached with a toothpick for eyes.  In the end it was very simple and looked impressive.

As I made the monster it at the end, I only chopped up some pineapple to go with the watermelon despite having other fruit to include.  The kids loved having the watermelon and were not at all deterred by the proper black pips.  (I bought it at a local fruit and veg shop rather than the supermarket that had no watermelon on the day and usually sell the anaemic type with not much in the way of pips or colour.)  I gave some to my mum and plan to make juice with a lot of the rest.

I was just finishing making the watermelon monster when my parents and a couple of Sylvia's friends and their families arrived.  We had lots of crudites, swiss cheese, bikkies and chips to serve with the pumpkin hummus and broomsticks.  I also made spider web pizza and ghost cupcakes.  These last two both deserve their own post.  I will be back with more Halloween fun soon.

Find more Halloween food on Green Gourmet Giraffe.