Day of the Dead Bread

Sam and Richard had me over on Thursday for some hot toddys and sweets in honor of Day of the Dead. Or night of the dead? It was about 10:30 p.m. when I got there. The drink of choice was toasty hot chocolate made with Mexican dark chocolate and Kalhua.


This is Sam’s Day of the Dead shrine. The little skeleton statues have names of dead relatives on them. To welcome them back to the earth for the day, they’re surrounded by things that they enjoyed in life, such as flowers, the speaker(?), a glass of water, and bread. Thankfully, we didn’t have to go to any cemetery, another ritual of the day.

Though I don’t have a complete recipe for it, the bread is made with anise seeds, orange flower water, some red food coloring to symbolize blood, and a dusting of sugar. Sam admits the skull shape on top isn’t normal, but she had an extra piece of dough and thought it looked good on top of the other bone shapes.

Dark chocolate-drizzled meringue cookies. (“I had a lot of extra egg whites.”)

As a perfect nightcap, which I may have to drink on a daily basis from now on, Sam prepared hot chocolate toddys, heating the chocolate milk on the stove while agitating it with a very particular wooden tool. You can’t tell from the photo, but after the loose rings at the end of the tool is this circular honey comb-like wooden tip that spins around, swishing the liquid so that it mixes the chocolate thoroughly while beating in a little air. I don’t know about the dead people, but we had a pretty good night.