Festive marshmallow snowmen with chocolate hats and buttons!
Ingredients (for 8 snowman)
Ingredients (for 8 snowman)
By “nutella” I mean hazelut chocolate spread. I always use the supermarket’s own version because it’s so much cheaper and just as good. The recipe I used from BBC GoodFood is for a circular baking tin, but I used my rectangular tin and it baked fine, although far more quickly. And if you’re thinking “cinnamon, yuck!”, you can always use only 1 tsp in the mix. But the cinnamon flavour in the finished cake is very subtle, even when using 2 tsp.
If you’re not from the UK, you may not know that it’s traditional here to celebrate the night of November 5th with bonfires and fireworks. This cupcake decoration idea – using chocolate flakes to create the firewood and piped orange buttercream for the flames – is another one I saw a photo of on Pinterest and decided to give it a try.
The cupcakes
Use your favourite cupcake recipe! My recipe index has lots of cupcake recipes if you need some ideas. For example: caramel cupcakes, yoghurt cupcakes and brownie cupcakes.
I used my golden syrup sponge cake recipe. I used the same quantities of ingredients for making a loaf cake, but divided the mixture between 12 cupcake cases and baked for 20 minutes at 180 degrees C (160 fan, 356 degrees F, Gas Mark 4) until risen and golden.
Decoration ingredients (for 12 cupcakes)
I saw this Halloween oreo spider muffin/cupcake decoration idea on Pinterest and decided to give it a go!
The muffins
Make whatever muffins are your favourite. You could make cupcakes instead. My recipe index has lots of muffin and cupcake recipes if you need some ideas. For example: chocolate fudge muffins, snickers muffins or Halloween brownie cupcakes.
I made plain vanilla sponge muffins: 4 eggs (large or medium), 8 oz (225g) self-raising flour, 8 oz caster sugar, 8 oz butter/baking margarine and a tsp of vanilla essence/extract. Beat together the butter and sugar until fluffy, stir in the eggs until combined and finally fold in the flour. Divide the mixture into your cases (12 muffins or 24 cupcakes) and bake for about 20 minutes at 180 degrees C (160 fan, 356 degrees F, Gas Mark 4) until risen and golden.
Decoration ingredients (for 12 muffins)
I can’t believe I haven’t made this golden syrup sponge cake before. It’s absolutely delicious and I can’t recommend it highly enough! I got the recipe from Baking with Granny.
And if you can resist eating it all for a couple of days, it would make a brilliant dessert: serve a slice warm with ice cream!
Wait! There’s more. Click for the recipe and more lovely pics!
Ingredients (makes 20-30 truffles depending on how big you roll them)
Method
This is a quick, easy recipe I found on GoodtoKnow. I used a lot of strong coffee and the coffee flavour in the cake was still subtle, so don’t worry about going too far.
I very rarely make bread or anything involving yeast. Mainly because I haven’t the time for mucking about with proving. But when I found this recipe from GoodtoKnow for chocolate Chelsea buns, it sounded straightforward so I thought I’d give it a go.
Traditional Chelsea buns contain spices and sultanas. This is a sweeter twist on the classic recipe.
I didn’t have enough chocolate hazelnut spread, but did have some salted caramel sauce to use up. And so that’s why my version contains chocolate and caramel. You can just use the chocolate hazelnut spread if you prefer.
Ingredients (makes 12 chocolate caramel Chelsea buns)
What can I say? I had cornflakes to use up! I found quite a few recipes which said to use ready-to-roll, shop bought-pastry. And that’s a good option if you’re in a hurry, but making the pastry isn’t that tricky if you have the ingredients and time. I used this recipe from Baking Mad.
Jam and cornflake tart is an old school classic. Another one I think many people would have had served with custard.
Ingredients
It had been ages since I’d made a lemon recipe and a quick search for simple options turned up this recipe for soft melt-in-your-mouth lemon cookies.
These lemon melt icing sugar cookies are absolutely beautiful, particularly if you get the chance to eat one or two when they’re fresh out of the oven. The outer shell has a sweet crunch and the inside is a fluffy cloud of subtle lemony goodness.
Rolling and baking the sticky dough in several batches is a bit of a faff, but your efforts will be more than rewarded.
Ingredients (makes approx. 50 icing sugar cookies)