Halloween baking, what yah making?

Sigma Force

Anyone doing anything fun or different for Halloween.
I'm thinking Halloween whoopie pies, am not great at decorating so got some orange ready roll icing and going to pop a circle of that on top of the whoopie pies and then a black cut out of a bat (if I can find a cutter the right size) on top. Then probably just regular choc chip cupcakes with orange butter cream and a little halloween sweet or decoration on top but keeping an eye out in the shops for black sugar crystals.

So what you thinking of making?

Acoshla

Halloween?? It's barely September!! :eek:

Eviledna

Any excuse!:p
I'll be practicing early for halloween so, making caramel apples, toffees, sweets mainly. 3 types of fudge, peanut butter, choc orange and baileys. Cake'll be Acoshla's brownies that I still haven't gotten round making to but have been saving for a treat.

Acoshla

I have no excuse to bake at Halloween unfortunately, do ye bake them to give to kids calling or to bring to parties? No kids call here so if we have any sweets/goodies in the house for it it would only be us eating them!

Sigma Force

Same here Acoshla no kids call here but there's usually a halloween party or two, at least I hope there will be this year coz I need the excuse to have a bakeomarathon, there's only so much we can eat ourselves lol.

Baileys fudge sounds yum can you share the recipe Eviledna?

Eviledna

We always have kids calling so it's fun to give them something different, but you have to be careful with allergies etc. I always ask their folks can I give them home baked stuff.

Oh who am I kidding...I hope they say no so I can eat it all myself Usually have a halloween horror fest afterwards with the buds and I make candy for that, alas serious work deadlines this year will prevent the usual festivities

All credit to Suzie Q and her wonderful fudgy contribution to the Make your own Christmas prezzies thread last year (Sooo ressurecting that thread in a couple of months!!)

Here's the baileys fudge linky:
http://www.boards.ie/vbulletin/showpost.php?p=69444007&postcount=9

FionaB3

Made this one yesterday, but also thinking of trying pumpkin whoopie pies with an orange mascarpone filling!:)

Sigma Force

Wow Fiona that cake is fab!

Orange and mascapone sounds nice, would you use zest or orange juice for it?
Can you put up the recipe for that as well?

FionaB3

250g full fat cream cheese
150g Marscarpone
100g icing sugar
zest and juice of 1/2 an orange

This recipe is from Claire Ptak's book The Whoopie Pie Book.

Fiona

Sigma Force

@ Fiona ..could I replace the cream cheese with more mascarpone instead or would the mixture be too mushy if all the cheese in it was mascarpone?

FionaB3

Sorry thought I'd already posted this!

It will be too soft, if you don't want to use cheese you could do an orange buttercream (zest and juice), or an orange curd Italian meringue buttercream. Both would be delicious!

dudara

I have two items in mind.

(1) Pumpkin whoopie pies with maple cream cheese filling. I first saw this recipe on the Brown Eyed Baker blog and I've had the recipe bookmarked since then.

(2) In the Hummingbird Cake Days cookbook, there is a recipe for a cheesecake which features a cobweb design. I'm hoping to come up with some variant of that.

FionaB3

Yum!

fitzcoff

Just googled pumpkin whoopie pies and the first recipe I found it's looking for pumpkin puree, is this just boiling/steaming some pumpkin and pureeing it?

I assume it is but just double checking,

also google has loads of recipes, which ones have ye tried and tested with good results?

Sigma Force

I've treated myself to some black and orange ready rolled icing and orange colour paste. Have ordered some mini halloween cookie cutters and halloween cello bags. I'm not good at decorating so cookie cutters are my saviour.
Going to fill the cello bags with popcorn.
There's a recipe on you tube for a gluten free option with popcorn and some sort of jellies that are all mixed and stuck together to look like spiders eggs but think I'm going to go with plain popcorn and do Nigellas blood clot and pus jelly which went down well last time, although made way too much of it. It looked really gross which is great about halloween baking, you don't always have to have it as neat, the yukkier the better as long as it tastes good.

Is it wrong to get excited about cookie cutters, I can't wait for my mini ones to arrive!

Yellow97

I found halloween moulds in lidl or aldi recently & have orange coloured chocolate so we've been 'practicing' making ghosts, skulls & pumpkins! It's just so difficult it needs alot of practice!!!

Sigma Force

I got the pumpkin one in Aldi..bought two by accident.

I used this recipe when I made cakes out of rabbit molds. They turned out grand, the tin itself didn't have much detail on it but if you plan on decorating it afterwards this recipe would work. Tasted nice too.

Ingredients
3 tbsp fresh breadcrumbs of your choice (bread, cake, malt loaf, etc.)
175g butter
20g sugar
2 tsp vanilla extract
Zest of 1/2 lemon
3 large eggs
140g sugar
2 tsp honey
175g flour, triple sifted
Method

1. Toast the breadcrumbs, blitz until fine. Grease your bundt moulds with melted margarine/butter, coat evenly with the breadcrumbs.

2. Cream butter, sugar, vanilla extract and lemon zest until creamy.

3. Beat the eggs, sugar and honey in a large heatproof bowl over a simmering double-boiler until pale and creamy. Remove from the heat, beat for 5 mins on high until cool. Beat for 10-15 mins on low. Doing this in a stand mixer will save a lot of effort.

4. Mix 1/3 of the egg mixture into the creamed butter mixture until incorporated. Fold in the remaining egg mixture. Fold in the flour.

5. Pour into moulds, leaving 1" of space at the top. Bake at 160c for 30-45 mins until cooked - test the centre by probing with a skewer.

6. Cool in the tins for 10 mins. Cool on wire racks. Glaze with a flat icing (icing sugar and lemon juice or water) if desired, or dust with icing sugar.

namurt

I work with kids and they have treat day every Friday. I know it's a bit early for Hallowe'en baking but I made these for the staff and they went down well.

Sigma Force

It's never too early any excuse to bake!

I'm so glad now I got a lot of the bits I needed early, now I can concentrate on just making the stuff. Just a few bits like jelly and sugar to get. Might invest in a large bag of the caster sugar flying through it here and the giant bag of icing sugar has come in so handy.

I'm thinking I might throw in some vanilla cupcakes and make the butter cream full of vanilla to give it an icecreamy flavour I might make them less halloweeeny by using the Dr Oetker polka dots or daisies or sprinkle them with black and white sprinkles..dunno yet.

dancingqueen

So, I want to make some cool little cookies/cakes ala scary style for the upcoming weekend... any ideas folks? All recipes online are American and include packet mixes, not my jazz

please help!

Princess Peach

I made these last week. Cake pops with Halloween decorations





Doing some more for the weekend. Also going to top some cupcakes with meringue frosting to shape a ghost, and mix orange food colouring with marshmallows and rice crispies, form into a ball and top with a green jelly for icing.

Sigma Force

Cute cake pops! I haven't had the patience ..yet..to try to make them.

@dancingqueen Nigella has a recipe for cut out butter cookies I tend to leave the raising agent out though because they spread too much. I just cut them out with a foot cookie cutter, with green icing for the toes they were very simple but popular.

Have set my mind on the icky blood clot jelly with pus (nigella recipe of course), spider cupcakes and whoopie pies..chocolate with probably raspberry fluff (not scary though) and some orangey spiced ones as well with orange butter cream and put orange fondant with black fondant halloween shape cut out on it.
Some regular choc chip cupcakes with buttercream and just topped with a halloween decoration.

ChewChew

princess peach, they are fantastic! i'd love to make then.. can i have your recipe?

Sigma Force

Baking done n dusted....Xmas next!!!!!!!!!!!!!

Pixie001

I made Pumpkin Pie - I was very skeptical at first, but I have to say it was really delicious - I would definitely recommend it. Looking forward to the Christmas baking now :-)