Michelle Darmody: Mummies alive! These sausage rolls will make little ghouls jive

Halloween mummies - meatballs wrapped in dough with spicy tomato sauce

As Oíche Shamhna approaches, it is time to unearth the scary recipes and make spider buns, shortbread witches’ fingers or creepy pizzas. 

These cute but spooky sausage rolls are a great Halloween party treat and fun for little hands to decorate with you. 

We usually have a pre-trick-or-treat gathering and these mummy rolls warm the bellies before the neighbourhood adventures begin.

Puff pastry is tricky to make. I usually have a few blocks of pre-made pastry in the freezer. You can get good quality frozen puff pastry, which is made here in Ireland and made with real butter. 

It is extremely handy as it allows you to whip up a savoury tart or a batch of sausage rolls quite quickly. Most frozen puff pastry either comes in sheets or in a block.

There is an extra step if the pastry is in a block. You will have to take more time to defrost it enough so you can roll it out on a lightly floured work surface.

With the sheets, you can just allow them to thaw enough so you can work with them easily.

You can serve the mummies with a pot of gooey tomato blood, either a relish or tomato sauce to add to the gore.

Baker's tips:

• A lot of pre-prepared puff pastry comes rolled in grease-proof paper that you can use to cover your baking sheet.
• It is important to keep the pastry in the fridge as it thaws out. You do not want it to warm up too much as it will lose its crispiness when baked and it will also get too sticky to work with. On the other hand, if it is too cold it will crack when you try to cut or roll it.
• You can use a pizza cutter to slice the pastry sheets into thin strips.
• The beaten egg wash will give the mummy sausage rolls a golden sheen. You can use milk if you do not have an egg to hand, but it will not give as glossy a result.
• If the idea of white chocolate chips on your sausage rolls does not appeal, you can make the eyes from tiny circles of cheese and decorate these with the icing pen. You can also buy ready-made eyes in many baking specialty shops. An alternative to the black icing pen is to stick tiny pieces of black olive onto little circles of cheese with some mayonnaise. Make sure the eyes are only stuck on after baking and completely cooling the rolls.
• You can make the mummies early in the day, or even the day before, and store them unbaked in the fridge. Place them on your tray and bake them when you need them.
• The finished rolls will store for up to three days in the fridge in an airtight container. The only trouble is the eyes do not store that well, so it is best to remove them or wait and put them on just before you are going to serve your mummies.
• The mummy rolls can also be made ahead of time and frozen. If you are baking them from frozen, they will need at least 45 minutes baking time.

Three delicious variations

Black pudding rolls

• For this version use 350g of sausage meat and 150g of black pudding.
• Crumble the black pudding into a bowl and add the sausage meat.
• You can add a sprinkling of dried thyme leaves as well, if you like.
• Mix the ingredients together with the back of a fork and form them into two long sausage shapes in the palm of your hands.
• Wrap the pastry bandages around the lengths of meat and then cut each one into about 12 mummies.
• Bake as instructed in the recipe.

Chorizo rolls

• I love the warmth and piquancy of chorizo. 
• It adds a lovely twist to these rolls whether you are making mummies or just a simpler plain sausage roll. 
• If you are making the latter, I would use about 400g of pastry rather than the 350g in this recipe. 
• I buy sausages that have the addition of chorizo and use them as per this recipe.

Sesame-sprinkled sausage rolls

• Use 400g of puff pastry to 500g sausages or sausage meat.
• You do not need to cut the pastry into strips, just line the sausages along one side of a pastry sheet and roll the pastry around the sausage.
• Seal it and then cut it into the size sausage rolls you would like.
• Make a little slit in the top of each roll and then after brushing your rolls with the egg, press them down firmly into a plate of sesame seeds.
• Bake until the sausages are cooked through.