DIY Halloween Cake

Trick or Treat

With Halloween Night creeping its way to your doorway, it is both a time for fun and superstition. So, to keep ghouls and ghosts away create a Halloween treat. Head Pastry Chef, Deirdre here at the Bay created her DIY Halloween Cake, called The Bay Ghost Buster to keep all the spirits away from Hodson Bay. It is lots of great fun for everyone even if it ends up messy, lopsided or weird looking.

Recipe for The Bay Ghost Buster

Download our recipe at the bottom of this blog post

Casper our friendly ghost who helps in the kitchen

Halloween or Samhain is when the dead walk among the living. It dates back to pagan times and signals the Celtic New Year. It is a time of fairies, ghosts, demons and witches. To honour the dead and keep away evil spirits, people prepared a feast of sweet cakes and other foods and lit bonfires.

In the 11^th Century, a tradition similar to trick or treating paid homage to the dead. Children went door to door to exchange prayers for the dead for soul cakes. ‘Souling’ was the name of this tradition. Soul cakes were sweet with a cross on the top. Souls were freed from purgatory when people ate the soul cakes.

In later centuries, people dressed as ghosts, demons and other malevolent creatures, in exchange for food and drink. And they called this custom mumming. Mumming predated what we know as trick-or-treating today.

DIY Halloween Cake Decoration

Halloween Traditions

Bats and Spiders on our ghoulish Bay Ghost Buster Cake

Chef Deirdre created a spiderweb with a spider at the top for our cake to give it a Halloween feel. Lots of people get the heebie-jeebies from spiders.

Did you know?

Spider superstition stretches back to ancient times. In some cultures around the world, spiders are revered as mystical creatures for their intricate webs. In folklore, they were depicted as storytellers, oracles of fate, foretellers of financial wealth, and even harbingers of death. According to medieval superstition, if you saw a spider on Halloween, it was thought to be the spirit of a deceased loved watching over you. So before you stamp your boot on a spider think of this.

Irish Halloween Poem

We leave you with a little Halloween Poem to capture the spirit of this holiday.

THE NIGHT OF HALLOWEEN

The Harvest moon fills the sky
A wicked witch goes flying by

Ghosts and goblins…skeleton’s too.
Moaning and groaning, waiting for you

Black cats prowl the graveyard plots
Witches cook in cauldron pots

Cemetery ghouls roam the ground
Not one unopened grave is found

Tombstones are an eerie sight
Shadows dance in full moonlight

The haunted house on the hill
Walk in there, and you get a chill

Jack-o-lanterns eyes so bright
Trick or Treaters scream in fright

It’s a time like you’ve never seen
Tonight’s the night of Halloween.

Happy Halloween

We would like to wish you all a spooky Halloween. Don’t forget to make your own DIY Halloween Cake to keep the ghosts and ghouls away.