While scanning through old magazines for favourite Halloween recipes to add to my shiny new recipe box, I came across one that I tried last year with less than stellar results. Not in terms of taste. They were incredibly delicious. Just not very attractive.
I encountered the recipe in Martha's lacklustre 2009 Halloween offering. It was one of the bright spots in an otherwise mediocre issue. Pastry Pumpkins. Puff pastry and cheese. What's not to love? I made a couple of modifications, as I often do. Replaced the Gruyere with Gouda. Replaced the paprika with cayenne pepper. But I think my mistake occurred in the rolling of the dough. Too thick. Much too thick. The first clue was ending up with a total of 12 pumpkins instead of the predicted 18 -24. The resulting baked pumpkins were not quite pumpkin-shaped. They were more . . . blob-shaped. In my haste to consume puff pastry, I also forgot to score the dough. Which likely didn't help. No photographs exist; they wouldn't be recognizable anyway.
But they were delicious. Delicious enough to merit a spot in the recipe box. So delicious, in fact, that I may not wait until next Halloween. Perhaps some heart shapes for Valentine's Day. Or snowflakes. If I find my snowflake cookie cutter before spring.