Halloween mallows and pretzels, not at all scary

Halloween isn't my favourite holiday - simply because I'm a bit of a wuss and don't like scary things.  In case you hadn't realised by now, I'm a hearts and flowers kind of girl, so with all the ghouls and ghosts and spiders around about now, I'm not in my element!  We have a DVD in the house that the girls really enjoy, called ummm, gosh, I can't recall what is called just now, (will add in the name when it comes to me.  Oh, I remember!  It's called Hocus Pocus) and it's about Halloween and that's fun, but hey ho.

So, how does Becca do Halloween in a non-scary way then?  Lucky you, you're about to find out...  I really like the crunchy salty and sweet contrast within chocolate covered pretzels, and had some black candy melts in the house.  Why, you ask?  Why indeed.  I simply couldn't recall what on earth I could have bought them for - I mean, me and black decorations?  It just doesn't make sense.  So anyway, I had these black candy melts just sitting around, plus some orange ones (I know, that doesn't look like a coincidence, but it was - honest!) so got to work.

A little bit of time and a lot of fun later, we had double-dipped marshmallows and pretzels with halloween sprinkles!  These were great fun to make, and so much more fun to eat!

 Mmm, thick chocolate on crunchy salty pretzels...

And how fun are marshmallows?  With chocolate and sprinkles, why yes thank you!

Mini cupcake fun at Halloween

I was lucky enough to be given permission to bake again for the girls at school.  Now that they're both at school, there were 2 class parties to cater for and after determining exactly how many mini cupcakes were required I realised that I'd have many leftovers.  What I hadn't figured out was just quite how many leftovers there would be - eek, 7 dozen cupcakes was not the total amount I had expected!!

But I had fun, decorating them with chocolate and vanilla buttercream, some coloured orange (but not flavoured orange, I'd learnt that lesson awhile back.  Kids don't like orange-tasting icing - odd, but true) and a selection of sparkly black and orange lines, white ghosts and black bats.

 The orange with bats and ghosts went to one class, the white with lines to the other...

 The chocolate iced ones went to the school office to be divvied up...

And these last ones plus some white ones with ghosts and bats went to Mr Becca's office.  Bet you there won't even be any crumbs in the containers when I get them back.  Happy Halloween!

Halloween, Becca Bakes style

Our schools have a Healthy Eating Policy.  Well, all of Scotland does really, and quite rightly so.  I believe that our fair country may be the fattest in Europe, something about which I'm not proud.  I'm an honourary Scot, having lived here for over 15 years now, and am still not a fan of deep-fried Mars Bars (seriously, someone in Glasgow 'invented' them!).

As such, school children aren't allowed to bring in cakes for their class on their birthdays (neither are nursery children) but I'm very lucky to have been given permission by our Headmaster in the past to bake (and take in with Mini-1) mini cupcakes for various class parties.  And so I was allowed again, for the class Halloween party.

Mini-1 chose orange icing with chocolate sprinkles because it was the most Halloween-y thing we possessed.  Oh no, actually we used graphite grey glitter (sold it by being told it was as good as black, but it isn't!  Don't let them fool you, if you want black glitter, buy black glitter, grrr).  And I made enough for her class and teacher - and they were very happy indeed!

See, it's not black enough, is it?  Never mind. 

And here's a random, lovely swirl in white that was done the same day, with a Wilton 2D nozzle rather than my usual Wilton 1M one...

And here's a photo Mini-1 and Mini-2 in costume, ready to go out Trick or Treating.  Mini-2 has her face painted like that because she wore her pumpkin costume to nursery earlier, in case you were wondering.  They had a fabulous evening, just like they remembered from last year.  The matching costumes and a couple of lousy jokes won most people over, and they had quite a haul of sweeties.