Happy Halloween 2012 - 3 recipes!!

Happy Halloween foodies. So glad you stopped by to glance your beady eyes on my ghoulish offerings. And you're wearing a costume, how kind... you make a lovely monster!!

This halloween I made a series of devilish treats for my guests and work mates.  They were dying to eat them...

First up we have some dirt cupcakes, which are topped with some rather sinister looking objects.

Halloween Oreo Cupcakes

Ingredients

Basic Vanilla Cupcakes

Chocolate Oreos

Sugarpaste or rollable icing

1tbs Butter

1tbs Icing Sugar

Method

1. Make your cupcakes using the recipe linked above. 
2. Split your Oreos and scrape off the chocolate filling into one bowl, and the biscuits into another.
3. Crush Oreo biscuits into a fine crumb. I do this by putting the biscuits into a double bag and then rolling with a rolling pin.
4. Add the butter and icing sugar to the chocolate from the Oreos and mix together to make a spread for the top of your cupcakes.
5. Spread the mixture onto your cakes and then dip to coat in the fine Oreo crumbs.
6. Make sugarpaste or royal icing toppers using food colouring and toothpicks to get your details. I made frankenstein, witches fingers, worms and gravestones.

I also made some Halloween themed cupcakes and shortbread for my work mates to enjoy, heres how...

Lemon & Honey Cupcakes 

Ingredients

Basic Vanilla Cupcakes

Lemon Juice

Basic Vanilla Buttercream

Honey

Candy Corn (optional)

Method

1. Make your cupcakes using the recipe linked above. Add Lemon to the mix instead of Vanilla. Add to taste.
2. Once cupcakes are out of the oven, top with a very small amount of honey while cupcakes are hot and allow to soak in.
3. To make the buttercream, follow the instructions in the recipe linked above. Add Lemon to the mix instead of Vanilla. Add to taste. Add a very small amount of honey.
4. Pipe onto your cooled cupcakes and top with a piece of candy corn. I got mine from American Soda

Cinnamon Spiced Shortbread

This is a really simple recipe to make and have in the freezer ready to bake for unexpected christmas guests. You can store it for up to a month in the freezer without losing any flavour.

Ingredients

Simple Shortbread

2tsp Cinnamon

Method

1. Make the simple shortbread dough using the recipe linked above. Add the cinnamon to the dough instead of vanilla. You can add other spices such as nutmeg, all spice, apple pie spice or pumpkin spice.
2. I rolled my dough into sausage shapes and refrigerated them overnight. 
3. I then cut into discs and pricked with a fork to stop the biscuits spreading while cooking.
4. Cook as per the instructions.
5. Once cooked, dust with icing sugar as per the instructions.

This blog post has been entered in Calendar Cakes.

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