Ghost pirates and vanished ships. Gosh, it’s Halloween in…Italy.

Tags

Halloween, Halloween in Italy, Halloween recipes, Pirates, recipes, Romance, Shehanne Moore, The Unraveling of Lady Fury, writing

 

 

Dudes, can we kindly stop arguing, so you can get ready for the special Halloween party  that will be the culmination of all your work? You know the business of  asking each of my fictional couples about Halloween where they are from?

 

We are blogging Italy today because Lady Fury lives there for most of the book.

Fury and Flint hero and heroine from the Unraveling of Lady Fury  are here, so how about you roll with the questions?

 

Lady Fury : I thought you said they were funny, sweetly articulate creatures who would make every effort to ask us interestingly worded  questions?  

Captain Flint : I have been known to lie.

Lady Fury : And you said they weren’t aggressive?

Captain Flint : If I told you the reason I’m down to nine fingers and they bite worse than you, you would never have agreed to this.

Shehanne : Okay, dudes…. Before she strops off can we maybe have a question? Or better still an answer?

Lady Fury :  Putting aside the fact that there is trick and treating,  and talking historically, Italy celebrates All Saints on November 1^st and All Souls on November 2^nd.

It’s an ancient tradition that can be  traced back to Ancient Greece and it is celebrated differently from region to region. In some they leave an empty chair, in others, they light bonfires……

That is a picture of The Beans of the Dead biscuits, fave dei morti, an Italian biscuit, eaten at this time.  But since it involves using your pointer finger to make them and you are likely to have eaten those, I am giving you this other recipe instead because there are rules about these things.

 

My recipe card is, of course,  so much better than these other trashy heroines of Shehanne’s brought along to bore you with.

 

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• Excuse me,  are we doing this or not?

• Witches fingers

• 350g (12 oz) plain flour

• 1 teaspoon baking powder

• 1 teaspoon salt

• 100g (4 oz) whole almonds

• 1 tube red decorating icing

• Combine the butter, sugar, egg, almond extract and vanilla extract in a mixing bowl. Beat together with an electric mixer; gradually add the flour, baking powder and salt, continually beating; chill for 20 to 30 minutes.

• Preheat oven to 160 C / Gas mark 3. Lightly grease baking trays.

• Remove dough from fridge in small amounts. Scoop 1 heaping teaspoon at a time onto a piece of greaseproof paper. Use the paper to roll the dough into a thin finger-shaped biscuit. Press one almond into one end of each biscuit to give the appearance of a long fingernail. Squeeze biscuit near the tip and again near the centre of each to give the impression of knuckles. You can also cut into the dough with a sharp knife at the same points to help give a more finger-like appearance.
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Arrange the shaped biscuits on the baking trays.

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• Bake in the preheated oven until the biscuits are slightly golden in colour, 20 to 25 minutes.

• Remove the almond from the end of each biscuit; squeeze a small amount of red icing into the cavity; replace the almond to cause the icing to ooze out around the tip of the biscuit.

 

Captain Flint.  Of course we will be. Here’s the lanterns. Fury here sculpted them with her teeth,

Captain Flint : That’s a pity, I was going to leave them for your party. This one kind of reminded me of you guys.

 

If it had ears that is.

Lady Fury. Why don’t you shut up? You can see they don’t think it looks anything like them. We want to get back to the children,  alive.

Captain Flint  : This here’s the napkins.

Sorry.  You know, next to Fury, you’re my favourite critters. Of course I meant….

Lady Fury : And here’s something else from me. A little spell…..

Lady Fury :You know, I think I did that rather well. Now, do we have any spare boxes?