Boil, boil, toil and cacao-based confections: We’re now in full-blown spooky season, and while we know our favorite pastry chefs, chocolatiers and brewers aren’t necessarily practicing their craft out of giant cauldrons, we’d like to imagine they are. How else would you get these Halloween-themed truffles, satanic beers, bloody ice creams and other creepy treats? Here’s where to pick up some macabre snacks and sips to celebrate the scariest season of the year.
Angel City Brewery
Angel City’s “hauntingly dark” fall beer made a dramatic reappearance on September 28, and in 2018, it’s sporting creepy, Halloween-ready paintings by local artist Parker Winans on the cans. Number of the Yeast—a rich, blackened IPA—is brewed with dark grain and West Coast hops, and comes but once a year, only available in limited quantities. What’s the ABV? 6.66%, naturally. Find it at the brewery on tap and in the limited-edition Winans cans before the beer disappears once more.
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Little Dom’s
Head straight to Little Dom’s adjacent deli to pick up pastry chef Ann Kirk’s fiendish creations, available all throughout Halloween week. (Because why stop the fun on a Wednesday?) She’ll be whipping up “brain” cupcakes studded with glass—fine, you got us, it’s just sugar—as well as some less-gruesome ghost varieties. If sugar cookies are more your thing, there’ll also be “Really Scary” cookies frosted with orange and black in phrases such as “Let’s go to IKEA” and “The Wi-Fi is out.”
Photograph: Courtesy Little Dom’s
Pitchoun!
If you’re anywhere near Downtown or the Beverly Center, make a beeline for these French bakeries and cafés, because they’re baking spooky eclairs, Casper the Ghost meringues, “poisoned” caramel apples and other devious goods from October 15 to 30. On the savory side there’ll be hot dogs baked in dough and made to look like mummies, and a not-so-scary but still fall-themed seasonal gratin of cauliflower, pumpkin and chicken. The sweets get spooky with chestnut butter cream treats that resemble Cousin It; chocolate “mice” tarts; voodoo cookies and more—not to mention a handful of pumpkin-starring pound cakes, éclairs, pies, cheesecakes and even a pumpkin charcoal cube (below).
Photograph: Courtesy Pitchoun!
Salt & Straw
This gourmet ice cream shop is known for using wild and eccentric ingredients, but in October, things get a whole lot weirder with their annual “Spooktacular” series. There’s the Great Candycopia, a salted butterscotch ice cream dotted with house-made Snickers, Twix chunks, Heath Bars and peanut butter cups; the Dracula’s Blood Pudding, which features real pigs’ blood; the Essence of Ghost, smoky and slightly bitter mix of grey sherbet and cocoa ice cream; and the Creepy Crawly Critters made of matcha ice cream, orange- and chocolate-covered crickets, and coconut toffee brittle mealworms. This year’s flavors even include a vegan Mummy’s Pumpkin Spiced Potion—a take on the pumpkin spice latte—here made with L.A.-based August Tea steeped in coconut milk ice cream with candied pumpkin.
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Valerie Confections
L.A.’s pastry and chocolate sorceress is keeping it creepy with five sets of spooky confections. Valerie Gordon’s Black Cat Box includes 61% bittersweet-chocolate truffles decorated with a black cat, while her Bat Bar, a 72% bittersweet-chocolate offering, gets sprinkled with black lava salt and wrapped in a silver-and-black casing sporting—what else—a bat. Those looking for a pumpkin flavor profile can opt for pumpkin petits fours (layered with a cream cheese ganache), or some pumpkin seed toffee. Can’t decide? There’s always the Black Box, which includes a selection of these and other spooky truffles. Find them throughout all of L.A.’s Valerie Confections, or order them online.
Photograph: Courtesy Valerie Confections
The Black Box set