#book of hours

[chromodorid]

Honey-Haunted Pumpkin Pie

"Harvey Hattington, perenially suspicious of the Blomberende-kind and their cuckoo-honey, nevertheless championed pumpkin pie made with cuckoo-honey as 'the Herald of Savour.'"

Recipe and notes under the cut!

Ingredients

The ingredients to make this pie in-game are a Soft Amber Pumpkin, dough, and spices. I couldn't find pumpkins that had the honey already in them, though, so we're using the pureed stuff from a can instead and adding the honey separately :p

Pie Crust

1 cup (two sticks or 227 grams) butter, cut into cubes, cold 

About ½ cup of ice water

10 oz (284 grams) flour

1 1/2 teaspoon salt

Pie weights (1 cup dried beans or rice work as well)

1 egg, beaten

Filling

1/4 cup (85 grams) honey

5 tbsp (70 grams) butter

1 15 oz can (425 grams) pumpkin puree

1/2 cup (100 grams) granulated sugar

1/2 cup (95 grams) brown sugar

3 eggs

1 tsp vanilla extract

3/4 cup (178 grams) heavy whipping cream

1 tsp ground ginger

1 tsp allspice

1 tsp cloves

1 tsp nutmeg

1 tsp salt

3 tsp cinnamon

1/2 tsp ground black pepper

Instructions

Making the Crust

In a food processor, add flour and butter and pulse until mixture resembles wet sand. Transfer to a large mixing bowl. 

If you aren’t using a food processor, add flour to a large mixing bowl. Cut butter into smaller cubes and combine with flour using a fork. Stop when butter chunks are about the size of a pea.

Add ice water to flour and butter mixture two spoonfuls at a time until the dough can hold its shape but is still slightly dry, around 16 spoons of water. This will vary depending on temperature and humidity in your area. Knead the dough into a single mass, cut in half, and wrap both pieces in plastic film. Form each into a disc and refrigerate for at least 1 hour.

After chilling, preheat your oven to 400F (200C). Roll out the dough to about 1 inch wider than your pie pan of choice and transfer to the pan. Trim the dough so that it fits your pan, decorate the crust as desired, and poke holes into the dough with a fork. Cover with foil and add weights. 

Bake dough for 15 minutes. Remove from the oven and brush the entire crust with an egg wash, and then bake again for another 10 minutes. Remove from oven again and set aside to cool.

Making the Filling

In a large saucepan, melt 5 tablespoons (70 grams) of butter on medium-low heat, stirring occasionally. Once the butter begins to bubble and sputter, continue cooking for another 5 minutes or until the milk solids turn brown and the mixture begins to smell sweet and nutty. Remove from heat and whisk in the honey immediately until the mixture is consistent. Set aside to cool.

In a saucepan, cook pumpkin puree over medium heat for 5-7 minutes. This will intensify the flavor of the pumpkin. Set aside to cool.

In a large mixing bowl, whisk together granulated sugar, brown sugar, eggs, whipping cream, salt, and vanilla extract until combined. Mix in cinnamon, nutmeg, ginger powder, allspice, cloves, and black pepper.

Once the honey mixture and pumpkin have cooled, gradually add them to the rest of the ingredients and whisk until smooth. 

Assembly

Preheat your oven to 400F (200C).

Pour about half of the filling mixture into the par-baked crust. Brush the outer portions of the crust with egg wash again and then place the pie dish on a baking sheet pan. Bring the sheet to the oven and then pour in the remainder of the filling. Place the entire baking sheet in the oven on the lowest rack possible.

Bake for 45 minutes or until the edges of the filling have set but the center is still wobbly. After baking, crack open the oven slightly to allow the pie to cool gradually. This will reduce cracks in the surface. After one hour, remove from the oven to cool for another two hours. 

(Optional) Draw a little ghostie on a piece of paper and attach it to a toothpick. Stick the ghostie decoration into the pie at an angle to make it cuter! It'll also look more like the art from the game :)

Notes

On Cuckoo-Honey: I used buckwheat honey for this recipe, but any type will work just as well! Buckwheat honey has a very earthy, sharp sort of flavor to it that I thought would suit Cuckoo-Honey’s additional Scale, Edge, and Knock. It’s not essential to the recipe, though! Use whatever honey you like best!

Par-baking the crust helps prevent sogginess once the filling’s added. The extra egg wash also helps keep the filling from seeping into the crust. 

Depending on the size of your pie pan, the filling might overflow. A deeper pie pan can help prevent this, as can making two smaller pies instead of a single larger one

[vio-lenceee]

"Lying on your bed, looking at the ceiling. Waiting for something to happen and knowing all the time that you were meant for something better. Feeling it. Wanting it. But how much can you take before you snap?"

[thebeautifulbook]

CODEX ROTUNDUS (Flanders, c.1480)

Held by Dombibliothek Hildesheim, Germany.

source

[vexwerewolf]

Right winger attempts to come up with a new joke

[cuties-in-codices]

drawings of flowers and cherries at the margins of a manuscript made to look like real material objects affixed to the page

in a book of hours, flanders, ca. 1520

source: Vienna, Österr. Nationalbibl., Cod. 2730, f. 7r-9r.

[theancientwayoflife]

~ Mary Magdalene Borne Aloft.

Artist/Maker: Taddeo Crivelli (Italian, died ca. 1479, active about 1451-1479)

Date: ca. 1469

Place of origin: Ferrara, Emilia-Romagna, Italy

Medium: Tempera colors, gold paint, gold leaf, and ink.

[dailyadventureprompts]

Thirsting Grail, Outergod of Wants and Wounds

Artsource

Adventure Hooks:

While travelling the party encounters a once famed surgeon who seeks their help in undertaking pilgrimage to the distant shrine of a death god. When pressed on her motivation, she reveals that through some curse or divine act of cruelty, those she operates on can never die, but also cannot heal. 

There is a tree that grows in the ruins of the old braon’s castle, said to have sprouted from the chopping block upon which he had his wife’s lovers executed. The tree grows no leaves, only flowers, and it’s said that if you make a tea from its blossoms, you will receive a vision of your one ture love.  Beings of woven thorn are said to guard the tree, but there are those who would pay desperately to drink of its boughs. 

A once peaceful kingdom dissolves into a generations long civil war, any hope of peace drowned beneath a tide of violence, ruination, and grievance that none can hope to escape.

Among the outergods there are none more eager to engage with mortals than the entity known as Thisting Grail. It is a thing of violence and appetite, and seems all too eager to lend its power to those most likely to misuse it, whether they sought it’s aid in the first place or not. 

Scholars and madmen have long debated the Grail’s motivations, what goal or ideology it is trying to achieve with the visions and often horrific miracles it bestows. In truth, Thirsting Grail has no goal beyond the pursuit of violence and longing, it is a means without an end, ready to lend itself to any cause that would make the world a bloodier, hungrier place. 

The god is formless, an ocean of boling blood that takes on the shape of whatever “vessel” its followers imagine for it, borrowing their cultural iconography and birthing itself anew each time. There are litanies of these avatars, hundreds more likely forgotten by history;  blood saints and baleful red stars and heart hungry blades. Perhaps because of blood’s ubiquity in ritual and occult practice the Grail’s influence can “seep” its way into the worship of other entities, divine or demonic, and it’s not unheard of for otherwise upstanding and dogmatic worshippers of banal gods to accidentally begin practising the grail’s bloody rites. 

Sanguimancy and other forms of blood magic are the most obvious of Thirsting Grail’s gifts, but it has other more esoteric offerings: smoke from sacrifices or incense mingled with the formless god’s essence can grant visions of desires made manifest, though often twisted through a disturbingly carnal (in both senses of the word) lens. All too often worshippers ( and the cult leaders that encourage them) see these visions as prophetic, leading to the outergod being sometimes called “the mother of truth”.  It can also manifest the objects of desire: succulent fruits, unearthly lovers, weapons of inordinate power, but there is something fundamentally wrong with these creations as they cannot grant true satisfaction, and often leave those that partake of them wanting more than when they started. 

Those who fall prey to Thirsting Grail’s influence can become warped as their own veins become polluted by the entity’s ichor: becoming feral creatures of endless cruelty and appetite, or having their wounds open wider and wider until there is nothing but wound remaining of their swollen flesh. Those so overtaken grow and warp and merge with others until new horrors are birthed from them, a permanent seedbed of 

Titles: Mother of truth, formless mother, font erubescent, the bloodstar.  Symbols: A red grail or fountain, cultural iconography stained with blood.  Signs:  Wounds that bleed but do not heal, plants overflowing or cracking open to expose their innards. Unsettling red dreams.  Worshippers: Those with bloodstained hands be they doctors, butchers, or murderers. Vampires, occultists, and other sanguiphiles. Instatiable gourmands and unfulfilled lovers.   

Inspiration:  I wear my influences on my sleeve with this one.  I’ve been turning the Elden Ring mythology over in my mind for some time partially because I think there’s a lot of fun ideas there but also because I felt like (in typical Fromsoft fashion) there wasn’t enough shown to really scratch my itch for discovery. 

The formless mother/bloodstar was chiefest among these elements: A killer aesthetic with lore that was a little too thin to use as inspiration. After a while that thinness turned into a feature, the idea of an eldritch entity of pain and violence that conformed to the needs of those who worshipped it, granting power to those who would go out and make the world more violent and painful.  I liked the idea that “mother of truth” was a misnomer, and that cultists would ascribe meaning and intent and iconography to a god that didn’t care one way or another. 

Another strong influence is the Grail from Cultist Simulator/Book of hours ( SERIOUSLY, play book of hours you fools), an eldritch entity/aspect of reality that presides over hungers and births be they literal or figurative.  The Blood + Mother connection was obvious here, but the Grail provided some more texture and esoteric aspects to fill out my version’s storytelling potential.

[victusinveritas]

Book of Hours, France 16th century

[upennmanuscripts]

#CoffeeWithACodex is our weekly manuscript show-and-tell. We're taking August off, but you can watch recordings of previous events on our YouTube channel! Like this one: Ms. Codex 1063, a book of hours made in London in the 15th century, with some lovely illuminated initials and musical notation. We looked at this one in February, 2023.

🔗:

[videogamepolls]

Requested by @bunbun-07

[nephriteknight]

book of hours gets you in character with it's limited UI and emphasis on the passage of time and the weather; cultist simulator gets you into character by luring you in with the Glory until you realize its 3 in the morning and you're frantically re-reading lore while juggling four different tasks and trying to combat fascination while a hunter is on your tail and you still haven't done the dishes in your real actual life

[vio-lenceee]

come under my wings, little bird come under my wings I swear that there's nothing up my sleeves

[thebeautifulbook]

FLEUR DE LYS-SHAPED BOOK OF HOURS, in Latin, use of Rome (Paris, c. 1553). Illuminated manuscript on paper.

180 x 80mm. i + 117 leaves, each page with 24 lines written in a 'roman' hand in black ink within a liquid gold border in the shape of a half fleur de lys, spaces infilled with liquid gold fronds on blue or red grounds, line-fillers and one- and two-line initials of the same colours, eleven lobe-shaped miniatures. Nineteenth-century brown morocco gilt, semé with fleur de lys, doublures of red morocco gilt, edges gauffered and gilt (upper cover detached). [Christies Auction House, 2006 catalog]

source

[aeolianasio]

reads like warning text in cultist simulator/book of hours that i would simply ignore

[vexwerewolf]

Last five minutes of an average YouTube video

[cuties-in-codices]

reynard the fox as a clergyman, with birds in his cowl

in the book of hours of mary of burgundy, flanders, ca. 1470

source: Vienna, ÖBN, Cod. 1857, fol. 59v