You can tell I’m a bit behind with my blogging at the moment. It’s taken me well over a week to catch up and as I write I’m panicking that I shouldn’t be doing this, I should be dusting!  Or so my husband tells me!  Instead I am going to type this, walk the dog, have a cup of tea and up yours to the dusting!  A few hours late won’t do any harm but if I don’t get this written soon it will be Hallowe’en 2013!

Every year I am always busy in my kitchen seeing what new ideas I can come up with for Hallowe’en.  This yearI have been working longer hours in my day job, but I still found time to bake over the half term week fitting it in and around my daughter’s rehearsal schedule for the pantomime she is appearing in soon.  I also like to make a batch of my cupcakes and cookies for the Trick or Treaters that come knocking on my front door. Along with all the Parkin I make I also offer cupcakes and cookies, although due to time constraints this year I had to buy in some Hallowe’en themed sugar decoration toppers from Imaginative Icing in York. I did try and make some sugarpaste bats as well though the pictures I took of those cupcakes came out very poorly!

A rubbish photo due to it being taken on my phone in poor light- a chocolate cupcake baked in a black cupcake case, surrounded with graveyard cupcake wrappers, topped with two tone grey and white buttercream and finished with a 3D hand made sugarpaste bat.

A batch of vanilla cupcakes decorated with either orange buttercream or two tone buttercream and finished with ready made sugarpaste skulls, witches, bats and pumpkins.

Horrendously bad picture which should have been edited but shows another batch of vanilla cupcakes, this time are decorated with grey and white two tone icing and ready made sugar pumpkin shapes.

For my cupcakes I am afraid to say they all came out rather garish. I am not a huge fan of bright coloured icing on cupcakes, preferring the more delicate pastel colours or even plain colours.  But Hallowe’en is a time when you go garish- bright greens, purples, reds, oranges and even black coloured icing.  That doesn’t stop children tucking into them though.  I made some of the icing in my new two-tone double icing bags which I bought from Lakeland about a month back and was desperate to use them.  Once I got the hang of using them I was impressed although the star icing nozzle is much smaller than the one I use regularly.

I really enjoy baking cookies and this is what it is all about for me, where I got the inspiration for the cookies from the Wilton website (who manufacture a lot of the cookie cutters I use for my baking)  Last year I bought a load of new Hallowe’en themed cutters in the sale at Hobbycraft (they were reduced as I bought them in November!) and was keen to try them out.  In previous years at Hallowe’en I have made various cookies for parties and Trick or Treaters but this year I wanted to try something different.

Thankyou for looking at these pictures and Happy Baking!
Love Sam xx

Chocolate Gingerbread Skulls. My son wanted to help me out, he put the funny facial expressions on the  skulls for me!

Bright green witches’ hats topped with sugarpaste stars.  These were the most popular this year, followed by the skulls!

For the trick or treaters I was keen to make these fangs from my new cutters.  I ran out of time to outline the edges of the cookies with royal icing piped on so in the end I made the teeth marks with a mini icing wheel instead.

The Trick or Treaters also loved this year’s version of my Pumpkin cookies,  made from chocolate gingerbread.

The cute bats were my personal favourite, I used giant pearl dragees for the bats’ eyes as I did not have time to make up the royal icing.