Happy Halloween!

While the happy Halloween revellers are gorging themselves on candy and chocolate, here is a recipe for some treats that are practically a health food.

Try it, and you’ll instantly lose 5 kilos and several inches around your middle. Promise! And you don’t need Halloween as an excuse to make these. Any time is fine.

The Ingredients:

1 pack of Marie biscuits

500 g dark/milk chocolate

250 g white chocolate

And now for the ingredient that makes this super healthy!

A small pack of mini chocolate lentils (you could use mini M&Ms or Smarties, but I can’t guarantee that weight loss)

Method:

Melt the dark/milk chocolate in a glass bowl, in the microwave, in short bursts, until smooth and liquid. Set aside.

Lay out newspaper on your work surface. Things will get messy.

Line 2 trays with parchment/baking paper.

Melt the white chocolate in a small glass bowl. Watch carefully and stir frequently as white chocolate burns easily.

Fill a small disposable piping bag with the white chocolate. Tie a twistie on the top end to close the bag, and keep aside.

Inspect your Marie biscuits, as if you were a Sergeant Major in the Army and the biscuits your troops. Demote the ones that are unfit for this exercise.

Dunk the good cookies, one at a time into the dark/milk chocolate.

Fish out with two forks and rap to shake off the excess chocolate.

Lay out the freshly dipped cookies on the lined tray.

Once about 6-10 cookies are done, cut off a tiny tip in your piping bag with the white chocolate and pipe a spiral on the cookies.

Starting from the centre of each cookie, drag a skewer to the outside of the cookie. If I’ve confused you totally, think of each cookie as a clock face. Drag the skewer from the centre to 12. Next drag it from the centre to 6. Then do 3 and 9. End with a line between 12 and 3, and 3 and 6…etc, till you have 8 lines radiating out of the centre.

Lo and behold your spider’s web!

While these cookie dry, dip the next 6-10. These are the mummies.

Fish out matching pairs of “eyes” in blue, brown and green from your chocolate lentil stash. All the other colours are fair game for you to snack on while you are working. Remember, lentils are high in protein.

Cut the end off the piping bag a tiny bit more to make thicker lines of white chocolate flow out.

Put two round blobs in the middle of each cookie, and stick on the eyes.

Use the white chocolate to make the bandages on the face of your mummies. Eat some of the lentils to give you the strength to continue.

Dip another bunch of cookies.

Make some squiggly ghosts with the white chocolate.

Dip a skewer in the dark chocolate and give each ghost a pair of eyes.

Sit back and enjoy your handiwork!

And if you decide to eat all the cookies yourself, without sharing them with the fairies, witches and vampires traipsing through your condo– it was unhealthy for them anyway.

Happy Halloween!

Radhika