Jen Rose Writes🌹

Hey guys!

Considering it’s not long at all until Halloween, I thought I’d post not one but TWO spooky treats you just have to make this year and, trust me, they’re scary good!

Whether you’re hosting a Halloween party, looking for something to do with the kids or just in need of a treat for a Halloween movie marathon, these two recipes are ideal for whatever you’ve got planned.

I’ll start with the Halloween cupcakes first. Delicious chocolate cupcakes, just a little buttercream with a spooky marshmallow character on top, what more could you want?

Of course, you can customise the cupcakes how ever you like: change the flavour (red velvet would be a particularly spooky choice) or the decoration (I’m dying to try out the new chocolate decorating pens I’ve seen dotted around the shops!).

Here’s how a few simple ingredients make these delicious cupcakes:

Ingredients:

For the cupcakes:

110g butter

1tbsp cocoa powder

110g self-raising flour

110g caster sugar

2 eggs

For the decoration:

1 bag of marshmallows

Food colouring (red, yellow and green)

Black decorating icing

Method:

1. Preheat your oven to 170c and line a cupcake tin with cases.

2. Combine the butter and sugar until light and fluffy.

3. Next, add the eggs until light and fluffy.

4. Once combined, add the cocoa powder and flour, mix until combined.

5. Bake for 15-17 minutes and allow to cool.

6. For the decoration, combine the yellow and red food colouring and coat some of your marshmallows then draw on eyes, nose and a mouth plus a stalk at the top of your marshmallow- there you have a pumpkin! For your zombies, coat the marshmallows in the green food colouring and draw on the eyes, nose, mouth and stitches with the decorating icing. For ghosts, draw on the eyes and mouth. To stick the marshmallows on your cakes, you can make a buttercream or use icing (depending on how much time you have)!

Here’s how they turned out:

Last Halloween I went a bit baking crazy (probably to substitute being “too old” to go trick-or-treating) so, as well as the cupcakes, I made spiderwebbed shortbread.

Unfortunately, I ran out of the black icing when I came to make these so, as a result, I created red and green spiderwebs (which are super cool, if you ask me!).

Here’s how a few ingredients make these spidey shortbreads:

Ingredients:

87.5g butter

90g caster sugar

135g plain flour

Green and red icing (though you can obviously use black!)

Method:

1. Cream together the butter and sugar until pale and fluffy, then add in the flour and mix slowly until they come together.

2. Turn the mixture out onto a workshop and roll out the dough until it’s about 5cm thick (TIP: Flour your surface so the dough doesn’t stick, now that’d be scary!) then put in the fridge for 30 minutes to an hour.

3. Preheat your oven to 170c and cut your dough into circles using a cutter (though you can use a glass, as I did).

4. Bake the shortbread for 12-15 minutes, then leave to cool.

5. Once cooled, decorate by piping the cobweb shape on the shortbread (they don’t have to be perfect!) and enjoy.

Here’s how they turned out:

I’ll be baking for this year’s Halloween celebrations, too, so no doubt pictures (and recipes) will be up on my blog next week. What will you be baking this Halloween/ what’s your favourite thing to make for this occasion?