Hoxton Street Monster Supplies Cookbook Review

With Halloween just around the corner, wouldn’t it be nice to open the door to trick or treaters and offer them a tempting pickled eyeball, or a slice of fairy brain fudge? Maybe have some family round for some tasty human snot curd on toast, and demonstrate your knowledge of how best to carve a human, all picked up from this book. It sounds pretty disgusting (and on the surface it definitely is) but dig beneath the names and there are some very clever recipes in here, designed to taste good but look repulsive.

We had a fair bit of fun trying to work out what the recipes were going to be; clotted blood cakes don’t sound all that enticing, but they’re actually really tasty cakes with white chocolate and cranberry. Mashed fairy cakes are simple shop-bought strawberry fairy cakes with some glittery blood-red frosting on top. My wife and I had a great time putting some of these into practise, and with the kids in the family enjoying a bit of cooking as well they really liked the process of making zombie-safe food. It brings a fun into baking that a lot of more serious cookery books miss out on; there was a lot of laughter while making things from this.

So mix up some hell broth, bake yourself a fresh batch of mashed bogey tarts and see if it still feels the same sitting in front of the Bake Off. It probably won’t, but it’ll definitely be worth it.