Cockroaches :)

TÜRKÇE İÇİN TIKLAYIN "Hamamböcekleri"
PER ITALIANO "Scarafaggi"

I know, Halloween is way over! It is taking me some time to prepare all the Halloween 2012 recipes to post. These "disgustingly" delicious cockroaches are going to be the third recipe I publish from this year's party. There is only the fourth recipe left.

Among other things I noticed I haven't published our costumed pictures yet. With this post let me make a record of them for history's sake then! :)

As you know, I was the Witch :) The mask I was using was quite authentic. Let me share one fact though, not even one minute passed after I wore the mask, all my face and inside the mask was completely wet only by breathing! As I told you in my previous posts, I needed to have long chats with every group of guests and also guide them throughout the Horror Tunnel where we used two smoke machines, so try to imagine my own horror! But no matter what "The show must go on", right? :)

Stefano wore Joker make up for the evening. As his make up artist :) the cosmetics I used on him were: white foundation, dark grey eye shadow, red lipstick and Uhu stick. You may wonder what the uhu was for. I used it to make Joker's scarred cheeks. I benefited from this video which I found on Youtube.

As for Andrea, he had Uncle Fester make up from the Addams Family. It was not a complicated one. I used only two things: 1.white foundation all over the face and head, 2.grey eye shadow

Fortunately I was to continue the evening without the mask so I had additionally witch make up under the mask. I benefited from this video for my own make up.

And finally here are the future witches and vampires :)

OK, let's get down to the business ;)

Today I will explain how I made these cockroaches. Well... This may be more of an art project really rather than an traditional recipe ;)

Here are the ingredients:

- Dates; for the sake of the authenticity, beauty (!) and of course the taste of your cockroaches, it is important to have some large, succulent and sweet dates with thin and shiny skin. Some have very dry and thick skin which wouldn't be good for our case.

- Mascarpone

- Sugar

- Liquorice wheels


Preparation:

• While I was preparing the cockroaches I used the pictures below which I found in an article on cockroaches in the HowStuffWorks web site. As first thing I printed them so that I would have some reference. I know, this is not a pretty scene to see mostly in a food blog, but let me get away with it only for this once! :)

• Basing on our reference picture, Andrea and I prepared the legs and antenna. Using liquorice wheels we first cut pieces for the front, mid, rear legs and antennas, then rip them in two and then divided them into groups. We cut them considering the size of our dates. Additionally, since we wanted to have our antenna thinner than the legs, we first ripped a piece of liquorice stripe in half as in the picture (we did not rip it all the way long but left them attached at the bottom) and then trimmed a bit internal parts.

• I pulverized 75g of sugar for 10 seconds on Speed 10.
• I mixed it well with 150g of mascarpone and then filled in a piping bag.
• We cut the dates in half and pitted. We piped the cheese mixture onto bottom half, placed the legs and antenna, piped a bit more of the mixture over the parts and finally closed with the top half. This step needs some care and a bit of handicraft as the parts of cockroach tend to move or fall. For ease of preparation, transportation and service we worked over paper baking cups. I would highly recommend you to do so as well. Let me note that they keep their form better after being refrigerated for several hours.

What else to say...?

Enjoy ;)