Halloween is around the corner, with plenty of parties and events planned for the weekend before October 31. If you're hosting your friends – or your children's friends – at home this year, or looking for something to spice up the office party, here are some spooky snacks to seek out.
Chocolate bats and macabre macarons at Laduree
The French patisserie has two Halloween-themed snacks this season, available from now until Tuesday, and promises these are terrifying yet tasty.
First up is a new recipe: Popcorn tart (from Dh52) has a crusty dough base with corn almond cream, macadamia nuts, roasted corn praline and caramel popcorn. It is garnished with corn-whipped ganache and a chocolate belt studded with edible bats.
Laduree is also retailing its limited-time Halloween macaron box (Dh155), with eight pieces of the confectionery, each printed with an eerie spider's web for you to sink your fangs into.
Zombie eyeballs and pumpkin shortbread at M&S
Marks & Spencer has a collection of spooky candy, ideal for house or office parties and trick-or-treat distribution, available from now until Tuesday.
Menacing Menagerie (Dh13) is on the menu, wherein chocolate shells are packed with caramel slime, as are milk chocolate balls repackaged as the Ghoulish Gang (Dh13). You can also pick up packets of Zombie Eyeballs (Dh19), sour spiders (Dh9) or Halloween-themed Colin the Caterpillar super sours (Dh15).
If you're looking for something savoury, consider the HallowScream munch mix (Dh23), while the light-up pumpkin tin (Dh49) is a suitably spooky gift filled with all-butter shortbread bats, ghosts, and pumpkins
Monster cake and RIP cupcakes at Mister Baker
If you're celebrating a birthday this Halloween, or just fancy some freaky-looking cake, Mister Baker has you covered.
Available in 3kg and 4kg sizes, choose from an eye monster cake (from Dh357) and multi-tiered Halloween castle cake (Dh1,197), complete with a creaky gate, tombstones, flying apparitions and pumpkins.
Pumpkins and RIP gravestones also adorn chocolate cupcakes (Dh35 per piece).
Artisanal bonbons and candy at Sugargram
Best known for its bite-sized cupcakes, Sugargram has released its Boo collection for Halloween, with themed packaging that says as much.
Within you can find mini cupcakes (Dh140 for 25), or choose between artisanal bonbons (Dh40 for five) and limited-time candy (Dh66), each individually wrapped as pumpkins, ghouls, spiders et al. The latter is available until Tuesday.
Each confection is also named based on its flavour – think Blueberry Bat, Cherry Skull and Choc-O-Lantern.
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Stormy seas
Weather warnings show that Storm Eunice is soon to make landfall. The videographer and I are scrambling to return to the other side of the Channel before it does. As we race to the port of Calais, I see miles of wire fencing topped with barbed wire all around it, a silent ‘Keep Out’ sign for those who, unlike us, aren’t lucky enough to have the right to move freely and safely across borders.
We set sail on a giant ferry whose length dwarfs the dinghies migrants use by nearly a 100 times. Despite the windy rain lashing at the portholes, we arrive safely in Dover; grateful but acutely aware of the miserable conditions the people we’ve left behind are in and of the privilege of choice.
WOMAN AND CHILD
Director: Saeed Roustaee
Starring: Parinaz Izadyar, Payman Maadi
Rating: 4/5
Benefits of first-time home buyers' scheme
- Priority access to new homes from participating developers
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Zakat definitions
Zakat: an Arabic word meaning ‘to cleanse’ or ‘purification’.
Nisab: the minimum amount that a Muslim must have before being obliged to pay zakat. Traditionally, the nisab threshold was 87.48 grams of gold, or 612.36 grams of silver. The monetary value of the nisab therefore varies by current prices and currencies.
Zakat Al Mal: the ‘cleansing’ of wealth, as one of the five pillars of Islam; a spiritual duty for all Muslims meeting the ‘nisab’ wealth criteria in a lunar year, to pay 2.5 per cent of their wealth in alms to the deserving and needy.
Zakat Al Fitr: a donation to charity given during Ramadan, before Eid Al Fitr, in the form of food. Every adult Muslim who possesses food in excess of the needs of themselves and their family must pay two qadahs (an old measure just over 2 kilograms) of flour, wheat, barley or rice from each person in a household, as a minimum.
