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!

4th of July is red, white and blue fun!

We're not American.  Don't have any specific ties with America - though there is an Uncle living in Tacoma. WA and a good friend living in NYC, and another good friend who used to live here in Dundee but is now back in VA I think.  And I follow a few American bakers, like Bakerella, The Girl who ate Everything,  Created by Diane, Pint Sized Baker, Rose Bakes and so on .  And I am part of an American baking group on Facebook, so see a lot of American style cakes and 4th of July ideas in my Facebook newsfeed and in the emails I receive to my baking/work email address.

So actually, America does seem to feature quite heavily, hmmm.  Anyway, a lot of great red, white and blue ideas have come my way recently, some trickier than others, and I fancied trying my hand at some of them.  These looked fun and easy, and the girls wanted to help with some of it too.  They would have helped with all of it, but it was warm and sunny outside and they were desperate to try out the new Slip 'n Slide that we'd bought last weekend.  

Don't know what this is?  Oh, you're missing out!  My siblings and I had a yellow one when we were growing up and used it loads!  Mind you, we did grow up in Melbourne, Australia, where they know how to do Summer.  Months of daily temperatures from 25-40c and sun - glorious warm, yellow sun!  Ahh, takes me back, ha ha.   Anyway, it's a plastic rectangle mat that goes on the grass and it has a tube through the middle of the mat that is poked with holes.  You attach the garden hose to the mouth of this tube and water sprays over the mat, through the holes and kids run up to it then slide along it on their tummies.  Make sense?  Kids love them!!

So, getting back to the baking.  I decided to go for two things I'd seen on my newsfeed from Facebook...  A variation on this Red, White and Blue Cookie Bark and some patriotic Marshmallow treats.  What fun they were to do, and easy too!  And oh my gosh, I had a sneaky taste of the bark - it is amazing!!!  We decided that adding Oreo's would be too much, and what a tasty decision that was.  The salt and crunch of the pretzels goes really well with the sweetness of the white chocolate.

You lay out the pretzels underneath (and Oreo's, if you're going to use them), then add the melted white chocolate over the top.

Then you carefully, or otherwise, place your selection of red and blue M & M's over the top before the chocolate sets.  I didn't think we'd have enough chocolate M & M's so used the crispy ones too.  Mmm, great idea methinks.

 Here's the finished product, all ready for the fridge.

 And here it is ready to eat, cracked into pieces for ease of nibbling.  Mmmm...

For the marshmallow treats, we even had real American wax paper - oooh!

These were a bit fiddly to do, but easy enough.  Although by the time I got around to them, the girls had had their hair-washed and gone to bed.

So they'll be a lovely surprise for them, and our friends coming to play after lunch, for tomorrow! 

 And here's wee funny for you.  Sadly, it's not that funny for me, ha ha

A strangely busy afternoon - the sweet side

We've had a little run of ill health at Becca Towers for some reason.  I had a very sore stomach for no real reason all day Sunday so lay on the couch or took a nap or two during the day.  The rest of the Team were fine, so they went off ice-skating without me.  Then whilst there, Mr Becca fell over and twisted his ankle.  And had to take a day off work, and nearly made us visit A&E (Casualty) but felt it was more likely to be sprained than fractured.  Then last night the girls had trouble sleeping due to head colds, with Mini-1 also waking up crying with ear pain.  I kept them both off school today and got an early morning doctor's appointment for her, and she was duly prescribed banana-tasting (but horrible regardless) anti-biotics for the suspected infection.  Nice, not.  So a sofa, dressing gowns and dvd's day for them.

Preferring to a) keep out of their way so I didn't get ill and b) having housework to get on with, I spent some alone time in the Kitchen.  And instead of making mini cupcakes for their end-of-term class parties, I opted for chocolate dipped pretzels (again).  Though this time, I went for sticks rather than twirls, and a variation on the colouring so it looked less Italian.

The Jackson Pollock-esqe throwing about of melted candy melts was fun.  Do you think these ones look a bit more Christmas-sy??

I had more of the red and green chocolate leftover, so whipped up a quick batch of peppermint bark, in milk chocolate this time.  More Jackson Pollock type manoeuvres, then the girls loved eating the little bit of leftover vanilla-flavoured coloured chocolate at the end.

This time I not only included the crushed candy canes, but also some red sanding sugar and some red and green little cupcake sprinkles.

Chocolate-covered pretzels? Sounds great

I had seen chocolate covered pretzels in my American cake group (online), and loved the idea of salty and sweet mixed together.  In fact, I think I may well have eaten some - perhaps bought in a small bag for a high price from somewhere like Marks & Spencer or the like...

Anyway, I was really keen to try them out, and bought some red and green Wilton Candy Melts especially, from my local Hobbycraft store, as they have the best price.  And lots of white chocolate too.  Can you see where I'm going with this?  Red, green, white... yep, Christmas was the look I was going for.  We even had red sanding sugar and white sanding sugar to give a little bit of sparkle to the edges.  I knew this would be an easy one to do with the girls, and had lovely images in my mind of a new Christmas tradition at Becca Towers.  They were really keen to get started too...

We did the white chocolate dip first, laying  them out on a tray covered in baking paper.  They weren't hardening quickly enough for the girls, so I popped the tray in the freezer to speed up the process.

We then went on to the coloured chocolate dipping.  You'll notice at this point how much the girls were involved.  I mean, obviously if it had just been me dipping the pretzels, the chocolate wouldn't have clumped so much in areas.  It would have had a much cleaner, neater appearance.  Yeah, right.  ;)

Before the final colour of chocolate dried, many were dipped in the sprinkles.  That was probably the girls' favourite part - apart from eating them of course!  Now, do you think they look Christmassy?  Or Italian?  

 I may need to source some red, white and green hundreds and thousands for next time...