I can't help but rejoice when darker days approach and holidays like Halloween are in sight. It's hard to explain why, but there's something quite magical about taking part in the festivities as an adult . In a way, I see these occasions as an excuse to let the inner child in me loose and I confess to throwing myself into the fun with complete and utter infantile abandon.  To me, there's no such thing as being too old to carve a pumpkin or cook a fantastically silly meal come 31 October.

I present to you three essentials in my festive repertoire which are enjoyed by children and adults alike. They come from one of my favourite books-  Feast, by Nigella Lawson. As you'll see from her instructions, they're meant to please children, but that shouldn't stop you. You can double, or even triple to recipes and include them in your next Halloween party.  They're every bit as delicious as they are ghoulish!

Slime soup 

• 500g frozen peas
• 1 spring onion
• chicken or vegetable stock concentrate to taste or a stock cube
• 750ml boiling water from the kettle
• 1 ball (100g) mozzarella

"Cook the frozen peas and spring onion in the boiling water with the stock concentrate or stock cube until tender and cooked through. Remove and discard the spring onion once the peas are soft enough to be blitzed into soup.

Chop up the mozzarella roughly and put it into the blender – or a processor, but soup is always more velvety when processed in a blender – with the peas and their liquid. I do this in about three batches, pouring the vilely green and – it's true – slightly slimy soup back into the pan and heating gently to meld cheese and peas better together. Otherwise just set aside and reheat later.

Makes 1 litre, which is probably enough for four to six children, depending on how much sugar they've eaten."

• 4 baking potatoes
• 3 balls fresh mozzarella, diced
• 2 tablespoons tomato ketchup, plus more to decorate

Preheat the oven to 200 degrees C. Prick the potatoes here and there with a fork and put them into the oven, straight on the wire rack, for 1 to 1 1/2 hours, depending on their size.

Take the potatoes out of the oven and let them cool down a little before you handle them. Carefully slice each 1 in half and scoop out the fluffy potato flesh into a bowl, reserving the skins.

Put the diced mozzarella into the bowl with the potato and add the 2 tablespoons of ketchup. Mix with a fork and then spoon the filling back into the potato skins.
Sit the loaded potato skins on a lined baking sheet, and dribble over some more ketchup in a gory blood-dripping kind of way. Put back in the oven to cook for 15 minutes, by which time the cheese will have melted and the potatoes be warmed through.

 Graveyard cake

For the cake

• 250ml milk
• 1 teaspoon white wine vinegar
• 225g plain flour
• 50g cocoa
• 2 teaspoons baking powder
• one-half teaspoon bicarbonate of soda
• 200g caster sugar
• 110g butter or soft margarine
• 2 eggs
• 1 teaspoon real vanilla extract

For the icing

• 300g icing sugar
• 60g butter
• 2 teaspoons cocoa
• 2 tablespoons golden syrup
• 60ml milk
• 1 teaspoon real vanilla extract
• one-half teaspoon black colour paste
• black sugar sprinkles
• Hallowe'en-themed jelly lollies, at least 1 per child

"Preheat the oven to gas mark 3/170C. Grease and line a 23cm springform tin. Mix the milk and vinegar together and set aside.

Make sure all your remaining ingredients are at room temperature if you can, but since no one's going to be overly worried about the cake, you shouldn't be either. If the ingredients are cold, the worst that can happen is that the cake will be heavy. But you do need soft butter (or the cake won't mix), so substitute margarine if that's not a goer. Put everything for the cake, except the vinegary milk, into a food processor and blitz to mix. Remove the lid, scrape down with a rubber spatula and then put the lid back on and with the motor running, add the vinegary milk.

Scrape, spoon or pour the brown batter into the tin and spread to fill it evenly, baking it for 40-45 minutes until it is well risen and springy to the touch.

Remove the cooked cake, in its tin, to a rack and leave to cool for about ten minutes, then spring open the tin and let the cake get completely cold.

To make the icing, first sieve the icing sugar. Boring, but it's got to be done. Melt the butter in a saucepan and when it's bubbling add the cocoa. Let it dissolve into the butter, stirring with a little hand whisk, then add the syrup, milk, vanilla and colour paste. Stir or whisk well and let it bubble for a few minutes and then take the pan off the heat and whisk in the icing sugar. Put the pan back on the heat and whisk again to help the sugar dissolve and the colouring disperse, then take it off the heat to let it thicken to the right consistency – thick enough to coat, but thin enough to trickle down to cover the sides too – as it cools slightly (but only slightly: it thickens fast).

Put the cake on torn-off pieces of parchment paper to form an outline of a square to catch the excess icing. Place the cake just on top of the torn pieces of parchment paper so you can pull them away once the icing has stopped dripping. Hold the pan of icing over the centre of the cake and pour over it so that the top is covered and the icing has dripped over and down the sides. You will not believe the incredible blackness of this. You'd have to pay me to eat it (good though it tastes) but my children, and all the children I've made it for, can't get enough. You can imagine their mouths look like afterwards.

Working quickly, throw them over the black sugar sprinkles to cover the top and sides of the cake before the icing dries.

Trim the lolly sticks, so that you have a stem of about 3-4cm to stick into the cake, and then plunge the sticks of the foreshortened lollies into the cake so that the ghoulish faces leer out from their black-frosted graveyard.
To be honest, this cake serves as many as you can stick lollies in for, if that makes sense. You could certainly find room for 12."

So there you have it; three disgustingly good recipes to add a little fright to your night.  Happy Halloween!

Tips:

• Feel free to decorate the cake however you like.  The only essential part is the black food colouring.  If you want, you can also make the recipe for 12 cupcakes instead of a whole cake.  Use golden foil liners and let the icing gorily drip down the sides of each cupcake. Decorate with gummy worms.
• Don't attempt to make the soup with canned peas as the taste and structure will not be as good as with frozen peas.

Nigella's Feast is filled with recipes for "food that celebrates life".  Not only does it have gorgeously appetising photography to accompany her delicious recipes, but Nigella's writing also reads like literature.  Her new book, Nigella Express is a must-have for busy people who like good food. Nigella's books are available through Amazon, Bol.com.

Blogger Paola Duque-Westbeek has a passion for good food and the Dutch culture of the Golden Age. She has obtained a BA in Dutch Studies at the University of Leiden with an emphasis on Dutch 17th century painting.  In the future she hopes to publish a book about pure food and eating well."

For more information on Paola and culinary delights visit Paola's blog
In my life.