Happy Halloween!

Happy Halloween everyone!  Hopefully yours isn't as white as ours, it has been snowing off and on for over a week now.  I guess those jokes about Canadians making their costumes so they fit over a snowsuit are true after all :)

A few days ago my sister and I decided to make some cupcakes and deck them out for the big spooky day.

We didn't have any specific plans, we just dyed some buttercream and let our imaginations take over. 

Pretty cool eh? Have a safe and happy Halloween!

Coconut Chocolate Halloween Squares

As I was whipping up the sweet sauce on Wednesday for a batch of home-made Donairs (which were followed by Donair pizzas the next night, yum!), I accidentally opened a can of 'sweetened condensed milk' instead of 'evaporated milk'.  Oops. Luckily, I noticed before I had added the garlic powder!


Ew, garlic powder and sweetened condensed milk? I just grossed myself out.


So I set aside the sweetened condensed milk, determined to find a use for it so that it didn't go to waste.  After dinner was done I searched around online and saw that there were a ton of super simple bar recipes that involved it.

I realized that many of the recipes involved simply pouring the sweetened condensed milk over a base or crust and then baking it all together. I took a quick inventory of my pantry, and these were born!  I am sure that there are very similar recipes out there, but I managed to create this as I went so I'm pretty proud of them.  I decided to dye the condensed milk with some orange gel food colouring for Halloween, and the colour came out great!


This makes enough to fill a 9 x 13" pan.  These are quite sweet, so you can get a lot of tasty little squares out of this recipe!

Coconut Chocolate Halloween Squares

• 1 1/2 cups oreo crumbs
• 1/2 cup melted margarine
• 2 1/2 cups shredded coconut
• 1 can (14 oz) sweetened condensed milk
• orange gel food colouring (optional)
• 1 1/2 cups semi-sweet chocolate chips
• 1/3 cup white chocolate chips
• sprinkles 

1. Spray a 9 x 13" pan with cooking spray and pre-heat the oven to 350 F
2. Mix together the oreo crumbs and the melted butter. Press the oreo crumb base firmly into the prepared pan
3. Sprinkle the coconut evenly over the oreo layer
4. Add some orange food colouring to the condensed milk and mix well
5. Pour the sweetened condensed milk over the coconut, and carefully spread it out evenly
6. Place the pan in the oven and bake for about 25 minutes, or until the edges are browned
7. Remove from oven and place on a wire rack
8. Once the pan has been removed from the oven, melt the chocolate chips by microwaving at 30 second intervals, stirring between each, until smooth
9. Pour the melted semi-sweet chocolate over the still-warm coconut layer, and spread evenly
10. Place the white chocolate chips in a sandwich bag, and microwave at 30 second intervals, mixing the chocolate together in the bag between each interval
11. When the white chocolate is melted, snip off a corner of the bag and drizzle it randomly all over the chocolate
12. If you wish, you can drag a toothpick through the chocolate to give it more of a 'swirly' effect. (yes, that's a technical term. swirly)
13. Sprinkle on your favourite Halloween sprinkles
14. Let sit for 20 minutes, and then place in the refrigerator until chocolate has hardened
15. Cut into squares, and Enjoy!

Halloween Cupcakes

Halloween is almost here! And that means it is time for some cute cupcakes.


The idea for these cupcakes came from my mom! I love how simple and yet effective these are.

The cute mummies were made with a flat basket-weave tip for the 'bandages'.  I just piped some random strips all over the cupcakes and finished them off with some eerie red eyes. Spooky, no?

The monsters were made using a Wilton #233 tip (often called a 'grass tip') and I used both purple and green buttercream.  These were given some googly eyes to add some fun character.

The rest of the cupcakes were swirled with a 1M tip and topped with various seasonal sprinkles. I'm particularly partial to the bone sprinkles right now!

I hope everyone has a very happy Halloween!


Some other fun things that I had for our Halloween party were these neat bottles.  The labels are from Martha Stewart Crafts and I placed them on various bottles that I filled up with some bright green punch.

I also saw a really neat candy corn centrepiece while browsing pinterest one day, so I did my best to come up with my own version:

And what would a Halloween party be without costumes for the pups? These pumpkin outfits were courtesy of my sister:

Happy Halloween!

Pumpkin Chocolate Chip Cupcakes with Cream Cheese Icing

Here they are! Now this, this is one tasty cupcake.  Pumpkin chocolate chip cupcakes topped with some rich and creamy cream cheese icing, dusted with cinnamon sugar and finished off with some fun fall sprinkles. Cute and delicious!

For the cupcakes I used the vegan pumpkin chocolate chip cupcakes that I had made last year, except that I used milk chocolate chips (which negated the 'vegan' aspect. Well, that and the cream cheese icing!).


For the icing I made a classic cream cheese icing by mixing 1/2 cup cream cheese with 1/4 cup butter. After they where whipped together I added 1 tsp of vanilla and about 2 cups of icing sugar. If you want thicker or thinner cream cheese frosting you can just add the icing sugar 1/4 cup at a time until the desired consistency is reached.

After the cupcakes were topped with the icing using a Wilton 1M tip, I sprinkled on some cinnamon sugar (1 tsp cinnamon with 1/2 cup sugar) using a fine-mesh sieve, and then sprinkled on some fall themed sprinkles.  And done!

Halloween Pumpkin Cakes

Only four more weeks until Halloween! So it’s definitely not too soon to post Halloween-related treats, right?

I was in a decorating kind of mood the other day, so I whipped up some small 6” cakes to decorate for the sheer fun of it. 

I wanted to practice working with fondant and give ganache a try. I have seen a few cakes with the ‘drippy’ ganache look and it seemed perfect for Halloween.

The tall cake is alternating layers of vanilla bean cake (dyed orange) and chocolate cake.  The short cake is all chocolate cake. 

Each cake was dirty iced in classic buttercream and then covered with fondant.  While the cakes were baking and chilling, I made these cute little pumpkins out of fondant. I love these little pumpkins!

I then slowly poured and spread out the ganache on each cake, mine was so thick! I was so afraid that it would be a runny mess, and it turned out quite the opposite and I had to work at it to get it to ‘drip’ down the sides.

The tall cake was finished off with the little pumpkins, and the short cake received a sprinkling of Halloween sprinkles.

And all done! These looked so festive and fun on my kitchen table :)

Halloween Cupcakes 2

I realize that we are well into November by now, but I really wanted to share some other cupcakes I had made for my sister's Halloween party.  


These are red velvet cupcakes with a vanilla buttercream icing, and awesome Halloween sprinkles. 


Swirls and sprinkles, they just make you smile!

Happy Halloween!

I hope everyone is having a fabulous Halloween weekend so far! For me, these past few days have been an absolute blast.

For a movie night this past week, I decided to make a Halloween cake.  This seemed like a perfect opportunity to try out making a 'checkerboard cake', and it turned out awesome!

You can get kits from wilton.com or Michael's to make these, and they are amazing.  

HAPPY HALLOWEEN!!!

Candy Corn Sugar Cookies

These cookies are so cute, I was able to convince myself that even though I ate six right away, they are tiny and therefore too small to have calories worth counting. 


Right?


Exactly. I prefer to live in my happy world of denial, thank you.


I found these cookies on marthastewart.com, she has a ton of fun halloween recipes up right now.  These were so quick to make, they are great if you want to whip a halloween treat up quickly to take to dinner, or to send to school with your kids!

They are a basic sugar cookie recipe, with classic candy corn shoved in them.  Baking doesn't get much easier than these!

The original recipe can be found here and makes about 30 to 36 cookies. 


Candy Corn Sugar Cookies

• 4 tbsp soft butter or margarine (or 1/2 a stick)
• 1/2 cup sugar
• 1 egg yolk
• 1/4 tsp vanilla
• 1/4 tsp baking powder
• 1/4 tsp salt
• 3/4 cup flour
• approximately 3 dozen candy corn pieces

1. Preheat your oven to 350 F and line a couple of cookie sheets with parchment paper (I really do love parchment paper!)
2. Beat together the butter and sugar until well mixed and fluffy
3. Add the egg yolk, vanilla, baking powder and salt, and continue beating until well mixed
4. Add the flour and mix with a spoon until a soft dough forms
5. Roll 1/2 tbsp of dough into a ball and set it on the prepared cookie sheet
6. Repeat with remaining dough, placing the balls about 2 inches apart (so they don't spread into eachother)
7. Bake for 8 - 12 minutes, or until the edges are firm (be sure to remove them before they start to turn golden brown)
8. As soon as you remove a cookie sheet from the oven, carefully press a candy corn into the middle of each cookie
9. Let cool, and Enjoy!

Halloween Cupcakes!

It has been far too long since some cupcakes have graced this blog. For that, I apologize, and bring you these Halloween cupcakes! The skeleton is my favorite of the group.

I had a blast making them, and can't wait to make more in the days leading up to Halloween!

You can decorate your cupcakes with icing, candies, sprinkles, anything that says 'Halloween' to you.


As it gets closer and closer to winter, I am losing my natural light faster and faster! Soon, it will be gone by time I get home from work.  I will do my best to work around the lighting, but until I figure it out, sorry for the yellow/orange lighting from my household lights!

I hope everyone has a Halloween full of delicious treats!

Chocolate & Pumpkin Whoopie Pies

Another awesome recipe that uses pumpkin puree! And the best part? These are perfect for your halloween party too.

If you have never had 'Whoopie Pies' before, they are an awesome dessert that sandwiches icing (in this case pumpkin icing) between two fluffy cookies that are made from a batter very similar to cake batter.

You can also add some extra excitement by rolling the edges in sprinkles or small candies!

This recipe is originally from marthastewart.com, and the original link can be found here. This recipe makes about 20 whoopie pies :)

Chocolate and Pumpkin Whoopie Pies

• For the cookies:
• 1 3/4 cups flour
• 3/4 cup cocoa
• 1 1/2 tsp baking soda
• 1/2 tsp salt
• 1 tbsp soft butter or margarine
• 1/4 cup shortening
• 1/2 cup sugar
• 1/2 cup packed brown sugar
• 1 egg
• 1 cup milk
• 1 tsp vanilla
• For the pumpkin filling:
• 1 ounces of cream cheese (half a pack) at room temperature
• 1/2 cup soft butter or margarine
• 1/2 cup icing sugar
• 1/4 cup pumpkin puree
• dash of cinnamon
• dash of nutmeg

1. Preheat the oven to 375 F and cover your cookie sheets with parchment paper
2. Whisk together the flour, cocoa, baking soda and salt
3. In a second bowl, beat together the butter (or margarine), shortening, sugar, and brown sugar until smooth and fluffy
4. Add the egg to the sugar mixture, and mix well
5. Add half of the flour mixture to the sugar mixture and mix well
6. Add the milk and vanilla, then the rest of the flour mixture and stir until completely mixed
7. Drop about 2 to 3 tsp of batter at a time onto the baking sheets.  I fit 8 cookies on each sheet and they didn't expand into each other :)
8. Bake for 7 - 12 minutes (depending on their size), or until a toothpick comes out clean when inserted into the center of a cookie
9. Let cool completely before icing
10. To make the icing, beat together the cream cheese, butter (or margarine), and icing sugar.  When smooth, add the pumpkin and spices and continue to mix until smooth and fluffy
11. To make a whoopie pie: Place a layer of icing on the bottom of one cookie, and then cover with a second cookie
12. Enjoy!