Halloween - Scary Pumkin

Halloween is drawing near. Apart from baking lots of halloween treats, I also bought a pumpkin and decided to make Pumpkin soup. It was lovely and warming especially on a cold snowy night like yesterday! I then decided to carve out some shapes! My dad always used to make me and my sister a pumpkin on halloween to take trick or treating. I used to love it. He would make us a pumpkin and then we'd dress up in a mask, wiches hat and a bin liner! Oh, the good old years of the 80's :)
Happy Halloween x

Bites of spooky chocolate cake

I made these for Halloween - little chocolate fairy cakes covered in chocolate icing and then topped with Halloween sprinkles! If you look very closely at the sprinkles you will see little bats and little pumpkins! They are hard to make out but I love the contrast of the orange and black together. Very cool for a dark spooky night!

I made the cakes using the following ingrediants:

85g/3oz self-raising flour
4 tbsp of cocoa powder
110g/4oz caster sugar
110g/4oz margarine
2 medium free range eggs
1 tsp baking powder
2 tsp milk

Preheat the oven to 170C/325F/gas mark 3 and line a muffin tray with cupcake cases/papers.

I followed this recipe from a new book my lovely sister bought me, I might write a quick book review on it soon, but basically rather than following the usual method of creaming the margarine and sugar together, it said to just put all the ingrediants, all of them, into a bowl and mix away! So easy, so I did just that. Everything went into the mixing bowl all at once (no folding in the flour in this recipe!) and mix until light and fluffly - then place tablespoons into the cupcake papers, into the over, bake for 20 minutes and leave to cool!

It was so simple and easy. Just like that they were done! My only criticism was that the cupcake papers don't stick to the cakes very well. I solved this problem by removing all the papers and serving them as little mini cakes. Once cooled, I covered them in chocolate icing and dipped them in sprinkles. Perfect for halloween, right then, I'm off to carve my pumkin next...

Shortbread

Shortbread is made using only 3 ingrediants and doesn't take long to make at all. It makes me think of traditional things and naturally of scotland! Shortbread has a lovely melt in your flavour!

All you need is:

275g (9oz) plain flour

75g (3oz) caster sugar

175g (6oz) butter

Preheat the oven to 350F/180C/Gas mark 4 and gently grease a baking tray.

Mix the flour in a large bowl with the sugar and then fub in the butter. Once the mixture looks quite crumbly begin to knead it until all the crumbs have stuck together and it forms a soft smooth paste. Roll it out using a rolling pin and use cutters to cut out shapes. I used stars, circles, pumpkins and witches!

Bake in the oven for about 20-25 minutes and leave to cool. Do you like the pictures?

Halloween Cupcakes

On saturday afternoon I made some delicious cupcakes for some friends that were coming over to dinner. I used the same recipe as I did for the victoria sponge cake and then covered then in yellow icing and dipped them in sprinkles. A good tip for using colouring with icing is to use a cocktail stick and dip that into the bottle of colouring and add it slowly to the icing. This means that you get the colour you require rather than a really deep yellow! Another good idea for treats on Halloween don't you think?! Check out the pictures below-Do you like my autumn themed cupcake cases?!