And I, for one, welcome our new zombie overlords

Rose and vanilla infused pannacotta with pomegranate sauce

The popular consciousness' preferred symbol of terror, the vampire, has been challenged in recent years by the spectre of the zombie. No longer a relic of genre films or a stock character in an Ed Wood production, the zombie can now be relied upon as a true agent of horror, in the wake of the vampire's softening up. Nowadays, however, zombies are not merely the preoccupation of film studio executives; between Carleton University's mathematical analysis of a zombie infection outbreak and the US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention's suggestions around how to be prepared for a zombie-related emergency, serious thought is being devoted to the idea of a zombie apocalypse.

So in the interests of being ready and well fed (because you cannot be the former without the latter), our friend Cheryl marked her birthday with a gory bash consisting of:

- brain hemorrhage shots,
- brain-bowl soup of hollowed out rolls filled with 'grey matter' (potato and leek),
- eyeball arancini (firm mushroom risotto balls with a black olive 'eye'),
- bloodied (sauced) chicken fingers with melted cheese, and
- an appalling-looking rose and vanilla infused pannacotta lashed with pomegranate sauce.

I had my heart set on making gravesite-inspired cupcakes, with miniature plastic hands emerging from the surface, but alas, plastic hands eluded me and going all Ed Gein on a dozen Barbie dolls seemed like a lot of work for something you can't actually eat.

I settled on edible gravestones instead and made up the following, adapted from my mother's flourless chocolate cake recipe which makes for the sexiest, richest consistency, better than anything made with flour (although she is amenable to the living dead, Cheryl cannot tolerate gluten).

Added inspiration for this treat and some of the techniques are derived from the Cupcake Bakeshop blog, a testament to baked goods as both pornography and conduit for experimentation.

Flourless chocolate gravecakes w/ spiced pumpkin mousse

Makes 22 cupcakes




Ingredients:

Decoration
150g LSA mix (a ground mixture of linseed, sunflower seeds and almonds, find it in the Health Food section)
Biscuits suitable to make headstones (I used 11 of Eskal's gluten-free vanilla tea biscuits, with their little borders resembling funerary decoration, though I did have to scrape off the little coffee cup impressions with a knife)
Green food dye
1 cup pure icing sugar
90g softened unsalted butter
1 tbsp milk

Spiced pumpkin mousse
150g pumpkin, seeds and skin discarded and flesh grated, cooked, pureed and cooled
250g double cream
1 egg white
50g brown sugar
2 tsp ground allspice

Cupcakes
200g softened unsalted butter
8 eggs
200g dark chocolate, broken into pieces
300g hazlenut meal
1 cup caster sugar

Method:

Decoration
1) Beat butter with an electric mixer until pale and soft. Gradually add sugar and milk until combined.
2) Add a drop of green food dye and combine, adding more for colour, depending on how green you like your icing.
3) Refrigerate.
4) To make headstones, use a sharp knife to split biscuits in two; if you can be bothered, use the tip of the knife to inscribe "RIP" or little crucifixes - or the names of your friends if you want to be cute.

Spiced pumpkin mousse
1) Ensure pumpkin flesh has been reserved, grated, cooked until soft, pureed and cooled.
2) Beat egg white until glossy and stiff and gradually add sugar to form a meringue, set aside.
3) In another bowl, beat cream to whipped and gently stir pumpkin through with a spoon until combined - do not do this if the pumpkin is hot. Warm is ok; don't be alarmed if it looks entirely unappealing, remember, it's going to be hidden inside the cupcakes.
4) Stir allspice through, add more if desired.
5) Fold meringue through pumpkin mixture and chill in fridge.

Cupcakes
1) Preheat a fan-forced oven to 180°C / 356°F.
2) Melt chocolate and butter together over a double boiler, stirring with a wooden spoon and set aside to cool.
3) Separate the eggs into two metal bowls and beat whites to stiff peaks; set aside.
4) Beat sugar into yolks until pale and stir in cooled chocolate until combined - don't overmix.
5) Fold hazlenut meal and then egg whites into the chocolate mixture.
6) Distribute between cupcake liners and bake for about 20 minutes, depending on the efficiency of your oven - test that they're cooked by inserting a metal skewer and checking it comes out clean. Set aside to cool.

Assembly:

1) Take a cupcake and using a short, sharp knife, cut around the top of the cupcake at an angle, making an upside-down cone. Lift out and cut off the cone, so that you are left with a flat, round cupcake "lid".
2) Place a spoon of spiced pumpkin mousse inside the cupcake and replace lid.
3) Grease the top of the lid with a little butter or spray oil and sprinkle LSA mix to cover; pat LSA mix down as necessary.
4) Gently insert biscuit headstones; you may need to hold your lid down as you do this so that it does not become upended.
5) Green icing can be applied around the edging with a knife and blades of grass can be made using a fork; I used a piping kit with a star tip to make an edging of green rosettes.