In Portugal, we don’t celebrate Halloween or, as we call it, “Witches’ Day”. Once in university, under the influence of the American media, I had a Halloween party where people dressed up like witches, ghosts and vampires, but that was the extent of it. Hence, when as a little girl I kept seeing movies where children knocked on strangers’ doors and got candy as a greeting, I knew I was deeply deprived of an extraordinary affair just because I was born “in the wrong country”.
Then, I grew up and would not care less about such date. Even when I moved to Canada, where I could finally participate on Halloween festivities, I was in downtown St. John’s, a childless ghost town on Halloween, and that was just fine with me.
Now that I am 20 minutes removed from downtown, and that I have a child, things have changed. Not only the number of children trick-or-treating exponentially increases each year (we ran out of candy last night!), we actually make an effort and carve pumpkins, have a simple costume and buy candy ahead of time. For the first time last year – probably induced by pregnancy hormones – I, with Chris’s help, started baking homemade treats for the neighbours’ and friends’ children.
On Saturday, we had a Halloween party hosted by a family that follows a vegan-gluten-free diet. I never willingly made a vegan-gluten-free food and my preliminary online search was not having any yummy results. That prompt me to a Facebook plea which lead me to find the Paleo Mom site and this Almond Coconut Bar recipe. They where easy to make and extremely tasty. I shaped them like tombstones so I had a little mountain of delicious almond-chocolaty crumbs which Chris and I could not stop munching on. Next time I will also carve R.I.P. with a toothpick for a more obvious Halloween connection (a very good suggestion from a friend).
For last night, I made popcorn balls following the recipe by my friend and foodie extraordinaire Andreae Callanan. I should have known better and not attempt to make the things when the word “syrup” appeared in the text, and when I had to look online to see how a popcorn ball looked like. Regardless, here I was popping corn and melting sugar at 8 in the evening to find out that you need about a cup of corn to make 5 quarts of popcorn and that I do not own a syrup thermometer! The thermometer in the drawer is for meat and does not measure pass 220F. Still, I continued and poured the syrup on the popcorn. The syrup solidified so fast that I was only able to shape a handful of balls. Chris arrived to a maple scented house and a very sad Paula. He re-named the balls, candied popcorn and gave his stamp of approval. I was able to go to bed not feeling as blue. Now, I hope to have a candy thermometer on my socking.
Oh, no! Solidifying syrup! Sounds like it turned out delicious anyway, thank goodness. Too bad the same could not be said for the burnt pumpkinseed brittle I made last year. It was a tragedy!
I think the problem was that I used maple syrup instead of corn syrup. MP less sticky so maybe it solidifies faster? I never tried brittle before. I’ll wait for the candy thermometer.