Halloween Cupcakes

So i didn't think that orange and black cake would look particularly appetising so I decided to stick to colouring the icing for the Halloween party cupcakes. SuperD had recently bought me a fab pressie of some icing cutters in the shape of little flowers etc so I got a chance to use them!  

I always think the modern cupcakes are a little heavy on the icing, making them too sweet...but that could just be me....anyway, i decided to stick with just the flowers rather than placing them on buttercream or icing or anything, and they were perfectly balanced - in my opinion anyway!

Toffee Cake Pops

So this was a new thing, Toffee Cake Pops, as an alternative to Toffee Apples......because, who really wants to eat an apple at a party???   Like...Come on!! The recipe I got from the website Home of Fabulous Cakes, the woman whose company made the royal wedding cake this year.  They're lovely....but, piece of advice - perhaps don't make them if you'll be in the vicinity of any diabetics...THEY ARE SWEEEEEEEEEET!!  (shudder from the sugar-high...or "shiver-high" as we call it in Ireland)

Catherine wheel cookies

So i has to rustle up some new-ish Halloween goodies for the party, you know something that i hadn't made before...so this might be stretching it but i went for Catherine Wheel Cookies....ok so theyre not very firework-y looking....but they're Halloween coloured!!!

 Made with a basic butter shortbread recipe.  

6oz plain flour

4oz butter

2oz sugar

15mins @180 deg C

Split dough in two, add orange to one (or red and yellow, which is what i did) and black colouring to the other.  Then roll out into rectangle shape and lay own on the other...then roll up into a sausage and slice to form your cookies!

cardboard cakeplate

So i decided to take a blog holiday in June because Rocco was in hospital getting his first big operation, and I didn't really have the time or opportunity to post crafts. And while July has been spent doing lots of crafts...there has not been a lot of blogging time, hence the late posting!!

This is just a quick one for parties - it's a cardboard bun-stand.  It is just 3 circles of thick cardboard, covered with patterned adhesive paper. 

To assemble, you just slot the two pieces of the stand together and slip the circles over one by one....then twist them round to secure and keep the stand in the correct position...make sense?

it's the sweetest way to say it

...so these are for my fabulous mamma!! Thanks for the help with the washing-smoke-damaged-burned-laundry mamma!! What would i do without you?!

bright coloured burp cloths

So apparently another invaluable thing to have is these long towel things to lay under the baby's head while feeding and lay over your shoulder when trying to get the wind up....i've seen babies in action and a muslin doesn't really cut it...you definitely get some lovely soak-through onto the shoulder of whatever you're wearing. So in the interests of remaining baby-bodily-fluid-stain-free, i decided to rustle up some heavy duty absorbers.

I found these bright microfibre dishcloths in a discount shop and simply cut them in two pieces down the centre, rounded the corners and bias bound with a contrasting colour.

Easy peasy!

rapunzel's hexen haus

So again this year we were making the hexen haus. They have to be different every year and so this time we decided on rapunzel's tower. I apologise for the photos, it really wasn't an environment conducive to good photos, so we just tried to highlight the details so you can make them out!!

Lil'pill was responsible for the tree in full bloom.
poog was responsible for decorating the back gable wall around the stained glass starry windows (melted glacier fruits).

I was responsible for breaking the gingerbread every couple of minutes and having minor melt-downs every time i decided that i decided it didn't look very neat this year. Thanks to lil'pill for talking me down off the ledge a couple of times!! Can you see rapunzel's marzipan plait hanging from the balcony?? That was also responsible for a number of my break-downs...it kept snapping and falling down...seriously i was totally losing it!!

And then we put up a little fence, not likely to keep many valiant princes away, but maybe when they see the face of the evil witch standing at the side they'll keep their distance....or perhaps they'll just notice the crazy sagging of the precarious balcony on which rapunzel is balancing and decide that the tower isn't structurally sound enough to enter!!

That's either a very old building and is the balcony wall is settling into the ground, or rapunzel has been doing too much snacking during her long wait to be rescued...You can see the light through the star stained glass window in this one below.

Well it mightn't look so neat as usual but it disappeared in double-quick time regardless!!
Yay Christmas!

classic christmas cake

Well even with all the baby crafting i still managed to get a little bit of time to make my Christmas cake! Yay...look at that super-smooth icing, o i'm so proud!! And the two pieces cut off are going straight onto a plate for my breakfast!

I ♥ christmas!!

Putrid pumpkin brownies

...made with fresh pumpkin i promise!! No putrid ingredients here!! I needed to use up all the pumpkin flesh that i'd carved out and this is a really yummy way of doing it - it tastes a little like carrot cake, but more moist - i recommend!!

Pumpkin brownies

300g SR flour
300g brown sugar
3tsp mixed spice
2tsp bicarbonate of soda
500g grated pumpkin flesh
175g sultanas
1/2 tsp salt
4 eggs
200g butter (melted)
zest of 1 orange and 1tbsp orange juice

Icing
200g soft cheese
85g butter (softened)
100g icing sugar
zest of 1 orange and 1tsp orange juice

1. Beat eggs into melted butter 2. Stir in zest and juice 3. Pour into bowl with all all dry ingredients 4. Stir in pumpkin 5. Bake in a lined brownie tin for 30 mins at 180 oC 6. Beat together all icing ingredients and spread on cooled brownies
Enjoy!

spiced skeletons

Rather than buy more cookie cutters in scary halloween shapes i decided to make my own scary version of the standard gingerbread man. The icing was a little difficult to use, i think i made it too stiff for fear of it dripping off - so i really had to sacrifice all the fine details i had hoped to add! Oh well...you get the idea i hope!
Recipe is easy peasy...

Mixed spice biscuits
250g plain flour
125g butter
125g brown sugar
1 egg
2 tsp mixed spice pinch of salt

1. Beat butter and sugar until fluffy
2. Beat in egg slowly
3. Sift in flour, salt and spice
4. Mix well and roll out dough
5. Cut out shapes and bake for 15 mins at 190 oC

scary sweets

So yeah i had some egg whites left over from some other baking and wanted to make meringues for the halloween party. I used the same recipe as the meringue mushrooms but this time tried to make them halloween-y. Did i succeed???

Umm...don't answer that - they're supposed to be ghosts.

I was pleasantly surprised when many of the guests actually recognised that!! lol!!

cheers to chocolatiering

So superD let me buy a cool little gadget that should come in useful particularly at this time of year! An easter egg machine!!! All you do is melt the chocolate, and pour some into each side of a little mould...then snap the mould shut and place it in this weird contraption.
Then see the little handle?....wind that for 3 minutes while the mould is being twisted through full 360 degrees in all directions (in all planes for the engineers among us)...or you could do that by hand...but for sure it's not quite so magical as winding the neon plastic handle of the ratchet machine of chocolatey wonderment.
Then put in the fridge for 3 hrs, turning each half hour. Then take out of the fridge and leave for 1 minute before popping open your mould.
Look - isn't it cool? I also did a couple of chocolate mini-bears with the left over chocolate. Then pop it right out...fun! I gave up the turning-every-30-minutes after the first time so actually this egg is very thin chocolate on one side and totally solid on the other!!! lol
Then get decorating! I got lots of cool little shapes with the kit, like hearts, flowers and butterflies...
...but my favourite has got to be the big bear on the right....cute!!!

bake for japan

Poog had a benefit morning for aid for Japan and we all brought buns and craft to sell (and buy of course!) I made simple fairy cakes using my mum's recipe:

4oz self-raising flour
4oz sugar
4oz butter
2 eggs

- 15-20 mins at 180C
- decorate with rolled ready icing mixing with colour as required

Over £200 was made and duly dispatched, along with our prayers, to aid the relief effort.

easy erdbeertorten

one of my mum's favourite desserts is Erdbeer Torte, preferable eaten while sitting on a sunny german patio at Kaffee und Kuchen time surrounded by assorted family members. So when she called a party, a "Salvation Celebration" to be exact, to mark the anniversary of the time she became a born-again christian (40yrs ago - yikes!), i knew that i had to have a go at making little mini ones for after dinner.
These are about 4" in diameter and are simply flan base topped with strawberries set in custard and decorated with fresh cream. I was lucky enough to find a baking tray with little ready shaped mini-flan bases, so was able to make the bases without much difficulty.
I made the bases using this recipe. I found it to be a little tasteless and perhaps a bit on the heavy-side too, but apparently they are supposed to taste like that....i think if making them again i will substitute the "official" flan base recipe with a simple cake one of my own....i'll just have to be sure to get the custard really stiff before putting on the base - otherwise it will wet the cake and lead to mushy-ness... yuck!!
mmm i could do with another one now....

mmm macaroons!

so we had an italian meal here on saturday night with a crowd of friends round. I wanted to make a recipe that i recently saw on tv... french macaroons (see the recipe on the bbc website). They recommended that you add food colouring and it struck me that they would suit the italian flag very well, being that you have to fill the centre with cream...which would be white.

I may have over-done the food colouring a little bit, these look quite eNumber-tastic.....but it had to be red, and if i used less colour, we would've had a green, white and pink flag!
They were a bit of a pain to make, there's lots of silly steps like weighing out exact amounts of egg white...and you have to add the sugar in syrup form so it needs to be dissolved and boiled etc...
But they worked out quite well at the end. They were surprisingly light and not too sweet.
so i do actually recommend making them, only you may want to pipe them out into little neat shapes...i sortof went natural and just spooned it out and they do look a bit home-made. Or maybe that is the crazy neon colour! lol!

hollow-heart shortbread

so i know it's a bit late, but we're going to a valentines party tomorrow night and i wanted to make something quick and easy to bring with me. Decided to make heart shortbread with a sugary window in the centre.

Basically you make your shortbread (6oz flour / 4oz butter / 2oz sugar) cut out hearts and cut a hole in the centre. Bake for 10 mins (@ temp 180 C) while still empty. Then remove from the oven and fill the hole with crushed boiled sweets (i used fox's glacier fruits - yum!)
They look like crushed precious stones!...maybe just in my head...
And back into the oven for another 5 mins.
This is the same technique as we use for the stained glass windows in our hexen hausen.
Isn't it pretty? Now hopefully it tastes good too!

yay mamma!!!

Happy Mamma's Day!!!

I ♥ you Mamma!!

cake for a carpenter

We had a birthday in houseofspoon...guess whose??!!

This is not strictly a craft but it was fun to make and that is my criteria for posting on here!!!

Al mio falegname - To my carpenter

festive florentines

I LOVE florentines, but had never made my own, until this year that is! They were delish, just the right balance of chew and crunch in my view, and they looked well too.

50g butter

50g caster sugar
2tsp golden syrup
50g plain flour
40g chopped mixed candied peel
50g crushed toasted almonds (i used crushed mixed nuts for more variety)
chocolate to decorate
oven: 180°C
Melt butter, sugar and syrup in a pan over a medium-low heat, stirring to dissolve the sugar. Remove from heat and cool to room temp. Stir in flour, peel, and nuts.
I put 1tsp of the mixture into each of the wells of a mini muffin tray, but you can make little bals on baking paper on flat trays if you want bigger, flatter florentines.
Bake for 7-8 minutes, leave for 5 minutes to firm up, then transfer to a wire rack to cool. Melt your chocolate and dip half of each florentine and set out to dry.

Lets have a close up for the crunchy, chewyness...mmmmMMM!!

Banana Buns!

So another thing that poog loves is banana...i remember she used to buy banana sweets, banana milk (ewww!), chocolate covered jelly bananas (double ewww!)

So i had to incorporate some banana snacks in there somewhere...was totally out of ideas having found no palatable banana recipes until i came across one on apparently jessie's cute cupcake and craft blog for banana caramel cupcakes. Thanks for the inspiration! Here's the result...

SuperD is loving them...i made several hundred (or thereabouts...) and he has decided that it is his breakfast food of choice from now on!!

On a related point...here's a pic of my beautiful new cake stand getting some traybake action at the party!! Thanks D!!