Chocolate Chilli Zombie Graves

Yes, I’ve put these into the category cute. They are. Even if you may not see it. :)

I am so happy with the way my zombie graves turned out! My zombie film group has become hard to impress (I do spoil them ;) but I think I succeeded once more, yay!

In case you are as mad as me and/or have friends as mad as mine, here’s a how-to:

1. Bake a chocolate chilli tray bake. (See recipe below)
2. When you chop up the chillies for the tray bake, do touch your eyes at least once. It’s how I did it, and I think it’s part of the whole experience…
3. Cut off the top of your tray bake so that it is nice and level. Crumb the tray bake top and top the cake with it. I used store-bought chocolate spread to make the crumbs stick.
4. Melt some white chocolate, and pipe zombie arms onto a piece of baking parchment. Make plenty of them because they WILL break when you try to stick them into your graves.
5. Make your own tombstone biscuit stencil using your zombie calendar tombstone as a model. (Everybody should have one of those! :)
6. Bake simple sugar biscuits for your tombstones. Scrawl RIP onto them with a bit of melted dark chocolate. (Or write your friends’ names – I must admit that I was tempted!)
7. Assemble your graves with lots of patience and care.
8. Ignore step seven because I only wrote that to sound mature. Assemble your graves with lots of sweating and swearing.
9. Present the chocolate chilli zombie graves to your mad friends! :D

Recipe: Chocolate Chilli Cake

This is the recipe for a round 26 cm baking tin. If you make a tray bake, adapt the quantities accordingly.

Ingredients
2 – 3 large chillies
250 g butter
250 g dark chocolate
4 eggs
250 g sugar
100 g flour
1/2 tsp baking powder

Method
Remove the seeds from the chillies and chop them up as small as you can (or as small as you can be bothered to). I’ve used 2.5 chillies this time, but I think the next time around I will use three.
Melt the butter in a small pan. Add the chocolate when the butter is almost melted. Stir over low heat until chocolate and butter are completely melted, then set aside to let cool a little.
In a mixing bowl, beat eggs and sugar until pale and fluffy. Add chocolate butter, beat again.
Sift and stir in the flour and the baking powder, then stir in the chilli bits. Stir well but don’t overmix. (Don’t you like these exact instructions? :-P)
Pour your cake batter into your baking tin and bake at 190°C for about 40 minutes.