Having never celebrated Halloween as a child (as it was just something our American cousins did) when I had my own children I soon made up for this void. Indeed our front window gets turned into a Halloween grotto every year and until recently both of my children went out trick or treating, now it’s just my daughter who loves putting on her spooky make-up, fake blood and black nail varnish.
I think the appeal of Halloween to me is that it’s fun, there are no presents to buy or lavish meals to plan like Christmas. It’s also a time to have fun and get creative in the kitchen with your kids and with this in mind I came up with the idea of Kransekage Mummies. They are simple enough for a child to put together with the help of an adult and are so delicious, like marzipan in cake form – no style over substance here!
Kransekage are usually served in Denmark and other parts of Scandinavia at big celebrations in the form of concentric rings made into a tower and decorated with miniature crackers and flags. Indeed we had 2 of these at our wedding, my husband said they looked like Madonna’s bra!
If you’re not having a big celebration though there’s no need to miss out as Kransekage can be made into individual pieces and for extra yummy indulgence dipped in plain chocolate. The white stripes of icing that usually adorn Kransekage are what gave me the idea to take this to the next level and fashion them into white bandages and with a few tweeks to the shape a Mummy was born! Let you kids have fun icing the stripes to make individual characters – they don’t need to look perfect
Kransekage Mummies
Ingredients
- 200 g Ground almonds
- 200 g Icing sugar
- 1 ½ Medium egg whites approx
- Base:
- 100 g Plain Chocolate
- Icing:
- 220 g Icing sugar
- 1 Egg white
Instructions
- Preheat oven to 200°C.
- Line a baking tray with baking paper.
- Mix sieved icing sugar and ground almonds together thoroughly.
- Add enough of the egg white to form a firm dough.
- Transfer dough to a work surface dusted with icing sugar and divide into two halves.
- Roll half dough out (with your hands) into a 2cm diameter sausage shape and divide into 6 equal lengths. Repeat with the other half.
- Place the dough sections on the paper lined baking tray and flatten, rounding off the ends and pinching in one end to form a head shape with your hands.
- Bake on the lowest oven shelf for 10 minutes until just golden.
- Allow to cool for a few minutes before transferring to a cooling rack.
- Once cool, melt the chocolate in a bowl over a pan of hot water.
- Use a pastry brush to paint the chocolate on to the base of each mummy.
- Put the mummies chocolate side down onto a fresh sheet of baking parchment or leave to set bottom up.
- Next make the icing by mixing the egg white and 220g icing sugar.
- Pipe wide stripes in a zig zag to make a bandage effect on the mummies.
- Then using the remainder of the molten chocolate, pipe eyes on the mummies.
- Allow the mummies to set and then transfer to an airtight container.
These Kransakage Mummies are the perfect Halloween treat, so delicious!
Happy Halloween!
So many of Halloween recipes look too tricky to make, my decoration skills aren’t up to much, but these look so doable!
Thanks Kavey;-)
How fun are these?! They look really great Camilla, and I bet kids just love them.
Thanks Dannii – the grown-ups are pretty keen too:-)
Lovely.