HALLOWEEN TREATS

31 OCTOBER is Halloween, an annual holiday celebrated globally to mark the evening before All Saints’ Day, which is the official holiday held in honor of saints and is followed by All Souls’ Day on 2 November. The Halloween tradition started some 2,000 years ago as a Celtic festival of Samhain, which had people dressing up in costumes and lighting bonfires to shoo away ghosts. It has, through the years. evolved and become integrated into a Christian observance, particularly when Pope Gregory III designated 1 November as All Saints’ Day and the night before became known as All Hallows’ Eve, which later on became Halloween.

In the Philippines, 1 November is an official holiday, and people usually visit their dearly departed loved ones in the cemetery, memorial park, or columbary on that day and not usually on 2 November. For the children’s sake, Halloween costume parties are organized on 31 October and children go trick-or-treating in the neighborhood, dressed in cut, supposed-to-be scary costumes.

In observance of Halloween, some restaurants “cook up” some Halloween treats, mostly baked items, which they decorate in Halloween style as an extra treat for kids and adults alike. Some bakeshops, such as the highly regarded Masa Madre Bakehouse, also annually come up with exciting Halloween treats for customers who want to keep up with the celebration.

This year, Masa Madre came up with the Guni-Guni: Nightmare of Filipino Folklore Halloween series, which is composed of three breads and six cookies.

The Halloween breads are Mangkukulam, Manananggal and Kapre. A mangkukulam is a witch, who is believed to use spells, charms or rituals and is dressed in a black witches coat and hat. Masa Madre’s Mangkukulam (P199 per piece) is a bread shaped like a witch’s hat, executed on hazelnut praline croissant with cereal cream filling. A manananggal, according to Filipino folklore, is a woman who can separate her upper body from her lower body, and the bread version of it (P209) is a severed lower body dressed in skirt with the woman’s “intestines” showing on top, but it is actually a matcha raspberry filled bread. And a kapre? It is supposed to be a large, dark, hairy humanoid who smokes cigar and lives in a balete tree. The bread version (P199) is a discreet smoked bacon and brownie pain cigar.

Also included in the series are six giant cookies that also come in a Halloween theme. These are Balbal (black sesame with almond), Daligmata (banana cookie with hazelnut nocciola), Sarangay (cookie topped with candies and chocolate), and Bangungot (bacon gochujang cookie), all for P129 per cookie; as well as Bungisngis (hazelnut cookie with kataifi) and Amaranhig (espresso cookie with cappuccino topping), both for P139 per cookie. Their names and strange appearances also conform to scary creatures named in Pinoy folklore.

Aside from being available on a per piece basis, the Guni-Guni Halloween treats are also available in sets. A set of six Halloween breads (two pieces each of the three bread variants) goes for P1,149 per box; while a set of six Halloween cookies (one piece per flavor) can be had at P749 per box. Mix and Match and Barkada Bundles are also available at Masa Madre Café (Cocolight Building, Bonifacio Global City, Taguig) until 11 November.

They will be interesting bites to share with family and friends as you gather in memory of dearly departed loved ones this season.