Happy Halloween!
Now, before I’m hit with a chorus of ‘WHATAREWEAMERICANOW??’, let me say a couple of things on the subject of Halloween…
1. It is not an American
holiday. Sure, the US has embraced it more than most, but we all
know this is an old pagan festival right? Okay, maybe not in the form it exists now, but it has links to the Celtic harvest
festival of Samhain, when the veil between
the world of the living and the world of the dead is thinnest and
therefore scary shit happens. Or something.
2. I can show you faded old
photos from my childhood of carved pumpkins. Sure, they are good old
Queensland Blue pumpkins, not the fancy orange ones you can get now.
Some of us have been celebrating this day for
a while, and the rest of society is just catching up. It’s not my fault
if my upbringing was more awesome than yours.
3. Celebrating Halloween
slows the onslaught of Christmas. The shelves that currently contain
Halloween stuff would be full of Christmas stuff. Yes, I know there is
already Christmas stuff…but there would be more
of it.
4. I like spooky, scary, creepy stuff, so of course I like Halloween.
If you really feel the need to
have a whinge, at least make it a good reason. For example, Halloween
and it’s origins are seasonally inappropriate here in the Southern
Hemisphere. It’s an Autumn festival. Really we should
all the dancing around the May pole and burning the Wickerman right
about now, and the pumpkin worship should take place in May. Of course,
that’s if you want to take your pagan beliefs seriously. Me, I just want
an excuse to watch scary movies.
Something that is fairly
American is Pumpkin Ale. A couple of years ago we good folk down under
had probably not heard of, let alone partaken in, beer made of the
pumpkin. Or anything made from pumpkin really, certainly
not something sweet like pumpkin pie, pumpkin bread, pumpkin donuts or
pumpkin coffee. Americans seem to put pumpkin in everything at this time of year. Including
beer. It’s my understanding that pretty much every brewery in the US
will put out a pumpkin beer in the Autumn. It’s
also my understanding that what is important in a pumpkin beer is not
just pumpkin, but the pumpkin spices that are evocative of the
flavours used in the pumpkin pie/bread/cake/donut/coffee etc.
In the same way that Australia
seems to be catching on to the concept of celebrating Halloween, it
seems that some Australian breweries have caught on to the idea of
making a seasonal Pumpkin Ale (even though it’s the
wrong season). A couple of years ago I tasted my first pumpkin beer at a
Halloween party in a now defunct craft beer bar. It was a one-off brew
made just for the party, so only available on draft on the night. Last
year I heard that a couple of NSW breweries
had made pumpkin beers. This year it seems there are a few more –
HopDog, Murray’s, Illawarra, and even one by Gage Roads which
you can pick up in Woolworths. There will also be bottles of the Moondog
Artisan Poser out in a few weeks. The times they
are a changing.
Once I knew I could get my hands
on bottled pumpkin beers at long last, I knew I wanted to bake with
one. Here’s another random childhood factoid about me – my Mum did make
pumpkin pie and it was good. I have no idea
if it was like the American version, but I loved the use of pumpkin in a
sweet pie. I had planned on trying my hand at Pumpkin Ale Bread, but
had a change of heart. Maybe it was that faded old photo of the
Queensland Blue jack o’lantern that spoke to me. See,
I am from Queensland. Not only that, but I’m old enough to remember Sir Jo
Bjelke-Petersen and his wife Flo….famous for her pumpkin scones. Anyone
else old enough to remember Jo & Flo will understand that they are
pretty Halloween appropriate. It was a dark,
scary time for the Sunshine State.
The beer used is the Saranac
Pumpkin Ale, which is the one American pumpkin beer that has appeared on
the shelves of a large national chain of bottle shops . It goes against
my preference for using fresher local brews,
but seeing as they are the experts when it comes to Pumpkin ale I
figured it was the logical choice.
Gather to ye…
2 cups of self raising flour
(+ extra for kneading)
1 tablespoon of caster sugar
½ teaspoon of mixed spice
60g unsalted butter – cubed and softened
2/3 cup of pumpkin puree (pumpkin, boiled or steamed, then pureed.)
½ cup Pumpkin Ale
As the clock strikes midnight…
Preheat your oven to 200 degrees Celsius.
Sift your dry ingredients
together into a bowl. Add the butter and rub it into the flour until it
resembles fine crumbs. Make a well and add the beer and the pumpkin
puree. Mix into the dry ingredients with a spatula
or a knife.
When fairly well combined, tip out onto a very well floured
surface. Knead until smooth. I found the mix super sticky, so make sure
you have plenty of flour on hand to cover the surface, your hands and
anything else the dough may touch. Roll out
to about 2cm thick. At this point it’s up to you how to cut them. I
favour the traditional round scone shape. If you don’t have a round
cutter, you could just use a knife and make squares. Or, you could even
shape the dough into a circle and cut into wedges.
Place on a baking tray with
baking paper on it, and put them in the oven for 15 – 20 minutes. They
should just be starting to brown on top.
You could probably enjoy these
with either a sweet topping, such as honey or golden syrup, or make a
herbed butter to compliment the pumpkin. Goes down well with the leftover Pumpkin Ale, or tea, coffee, Bonox…pretty much
anything.
I found the flavor of these a
little too subtle. I was hoping for a little more. More pumpkin, or more
spice. Just more. They’re a very nice scone without a doubt – not too
heavy or dry – just not what I expected. It
probably didn’t help that I didn’t taste the beer before using it. I
was fairly conservative with the amount of spice added, as I expected a
lot to come from the beer. I may up the spice next time.
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