If you want the perfect gory Halloween treat to scare you own kids with or to hand out to trick or treaters, these Witch's Fingers biscuits, inspired by the traditional Spanish Dedos de Bruja, are simple to make and use nothing but store cupboard basics. They look really effective !
I used up a bag of Black Forest flavoured icing sugar, which is what gave them their brown colour. If using regular icing sugar, you might want to add in a little cocoa powder or even substitute some green food colouring - the more disgusting-looking, the better !
Witch's Fingers
ingredients :
255g plain flour
110g icing sugar
1 egg
150g margarine or softened butter
pinch of salt
40g ground almonds or 1 sachet (35g) of Ready Brek
about 25 almonds
strawberry jam
Start by creaming together the margarine and icing sugar (with the addition of cocoa powder or green food colouring, if using plain icing sugar).
Add the egg, salt, ground almonds or Ready Brek and flour, and mix until it forms a ball of dough. Do not over mix. Using Ready Brek (very finely milled oats) or ground almonds helps give it a firmer consistency so it holds it shape better during cooking. Pop in the freezer compartment of the fridge while you preheat the oven to 170°.
During this time, prepare the almonds. If they still have the skin on, pop them in a little boiling water for a couple of minutes then drain and squeeze the skins off - they should just slide straight off.
After ten minutes, roll the ball of dough into a cylinder shape and cut into five sections. Cut each section into five sections so you should have 25 equally sized pieces of dough.
Use your hands to roll them into finger shapes. Pierre giggled that they looked like dog poo at this stage - ah well, it's in keeping with the Halloween theme !
Press an almond on the end of each finger, pointy side up, sticking out slightly further than the end of the biscuit, and use a knife to add lines to the fingers for knuckles and fingertip joints.
Don't worry if they're not perfectly straight - everyone knows that witches have gnarled hands and knobbly fingers !
Arrange on a baking tray and bake at 170° for 20 minutes. If you haven't coloured your pastry with cocoa powder, you might want to brush it with egg for a more golden finish.
Heat a little strawberry jam in the microwave for 1 minutes until it's slightly runny, then use a brush to add gory blood to the ends of the biscuits around the nails.
They are traditionally eaten with a "fake blood" strawberry or raspberry puree dip - strawberry jam would do just fine. They are slightly bland so they do need a little oomph from a dip - the Madhouse kids opted for Nutella !
Everyone agreed that they look totally horrific !
Pierre thought they were hilarious and kept pointing them at people and pretending to pick his nose with them !
Happy Halloween !
Adding to this month's #KitchenClearout linky as it used up a bag of icing sugar and the end of a jar of strawberry jam.
So realistic great job
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