Halloween Eyeball cupcakes

 Once again rather behind on my posts!!I love Halloween and this year was even more special as it was the first year that I could celebrate it with Chloe! I can´t wait till she´s a bit older to hold a Halloween party for her and her friends!This year though we celebrated Halloween in a pretty mudane kind of way. For starters, I had to work till 9pm so there was no trick-or-treating but I think she´s still a bit young for that anyway. There was a Halloween part at her nursery school,which she dressed up for...we managed to find a cute little witch´s costume.

The day after Halloween (All Saint´s ) is a bank holiday in Spain so I decided to whip up Annabel Karmel´s Halloween Eyeball Cupcakes although instead of the vanilla, I used lemon rind to give them a nice lemony flavour. As I didn´t have much icing sugar, I made some glace icing,half of which I coloured green using yellow and blue liquid food colouring. I then used assorted sweets for the eyeballs and to make the faces. Unfortunately,they don´t look quite as good as the photos pictured on the recipe webpage but nevertheless these are easy to bake and great fun to make and decorate with your kids. I tried to involve Chloe by trying to let her help me mix the green icing but all she wanted to do was to try and eat it and then wandered off to find her daddy!!Maybe I have to wait till she´s a little older to try and do some baking/cooking with her. I´m looking forward to when we can bake/cook together!

Belated Halloween Pumpkin Spider Cupcakes

Although Halloween is long over, I still had some orange and black fondant so I decided to make the Halloween pumpkin cupcakes I made last year as I also had a jar of pumpkin that needed using up too. I actually made these cupcakes last weekend but haven´t got round to blogging it until now!

Using round cookie cutters, I cut out circles of orange rolled fondant and stuck it onto the pumpkin cupcakes using edible glue. I then rolled out the black fondant and using a 16 icing nozzle and a 2 icing nozzle, cut out the head and body for the spider. I then cut thin strips for the legs, which I rolled between my fingers to shape them into spidery legs and stuck them onto the orange fondant-again with the edible glue! I then rolled some small balls of orange fondant for the spider´s eyes. I still have some black and orange fondant left so any ideas of what I can do with it, which aren´t related to Halloween, are greatly welcomed!! Looking forward to next Halloween when Chloe will be able to dress up and join in the fun!!

Halloween decorated biscuits (in a bit of a rush!)

After ordering the Halloween cutters and the black and orange fondant, they finally arrived and I could set to on making some Halloween decorated biscuits. I made my usual biscuit recipe, the one I used for Chloe´s Christening biscuits but it´s not easy juggling a baby and baking!! It took me all day to make these in between feeding Chloe, having dinner, taking her for a walk etc! Or maybe I´m just slow!!

I was going to decorate the ghosts with royal icing but in the end settled on glace icing as it was quicker to whip up and despite using a spatula instead of piping it on, I think they actually look quite neat!! I made the eyes and mouths with some black fondant and stuck them on with some edible glue. I then rolled out some black fondant and covered the gravestones and bats with black fondant. Using the glace icing, I then piped RIP onto the tombstones, unfortunately as the icing was quite thin, it was very difficult to pipe writing and kept blobbing out and joining up so it was harder to make out what it said(but had to make do as ended up having to rush it all). I then rolled out some orange fondant and covered the pumpkin- shaped biscuits and made eyes for the bats. I then cut out some black triangles and squiggly shapes for the eyes and mouths of the pumpkin and stuck them on with the edible glue again! I think by the time I finished it was 1 am!!

I was planning on doing more detail,like giving the pumpkins green stalks and maybe giving the bats fangs or mouths etc but as it got quite late and I was tired, I didn´t have the energy or the will! All in all though, I don´t think they turned out that bad even though they were decorated in quite a hurried manner!!

Halloween Pumpkin Cupcakes

These Halloween cupcakes are well overdue now as I made them on Halloween itself for our Halloween party. They are slightly adapted from my cupcake calender and despite the decorating part being a bit fiddly, they went down a treat. With the cupcakes containing pumpkin puree and the addition of spices such as cinnamon and allspice, they are definitely a taste of autumn and Halloween!





Ingredients (makes around 16 medium sized cupcakes)



1 300g jar of pumpkin pieces (it´s very difficult to find here in Spain, I found it in Aldi but nearly ended up having to leave the pumpkin out which wouldn´t have been the same!)(use all pumpkin pieces but only added a little of juice from the jar)



1 1/2 cups plain flour



1tsp ground cinnamon



1tsp baking soda (bicarbonate of soda)



1 tsp baking powder



1tsp allspice



1 1/4 cups sugar (preferably caster)



1/2 cup olive oil (mild is best so doesn´t affect taste of cupcakes)



2 lightly beaten eggs



1/2 cup milk

orange & black fondant



Halloween cookie cutters



apricot jam





Method

1. Puree the pumpkin pieces with a little of syrup/juice from jar in a blender-should make about 1 cup.

2.Preheat oven to 350ºF (175ºC) and place cupcake cases in muffin tray.

3. Mix all dry ingredients together.

4. Beat oil, eggs and milk in a large bowl and add pumpkin puree.

5. Gradually add dry ingredients to wet ingredients and stir till well combined.

6.Spoon into cupcake cases and bake for 20-30 mins (depending on your oven).

7.When cool, brush with apricot jam. Cut out black and orange fondant circles using cookie cutters and stick on top of cupcakes.

8. Using Halloween cookie cutters cut out Halloween shapes in orange and black fondant. Brush with apricot jam and stick on top of fondant circles and voila you have some cute, scary(ish) Halloween cupcakes!



I used some Halloween cookie cutters I got at Target when I was in the USA, which were great for this project.However, it was a little fiddly as you had to cut out the eyes, nose and mouth with a knife so patience was definitely a virtue! Also, the cupcakes didn´t rise very much so I´m not sure if this was due to using olive oil but they tasted great,which is the main thing!