I want to render raw .html pages using Express 3 as follows:

server.get('/', function(req, res) {

    res.render('login.html');

}

This is how I have configured the server to render raw HTML pages (inspired from this outdated question):

server

    .set('view options', {layout: false})

    .set('views', './../')

    .engine('html', function(str, options) {

        return function(locals) {

             return str;

        };

    });

Unfortunately, with this configuration the page hangs and is never rendered properly. What have I done wrong? How can I render raw HTLM using Express 3 without fancy rendering engines such as Jade and EJS?