Although I live in England I adore Halloween. I adore all holiday seasons to be honest, any excuse to decorate or dress up. Every Halloween I prepare a large bucket of sweets or candies by the front door and one year I decided to go the extra step and make some cup cakes. These are probably more suitable to give out in your office as in reality they don’t travel well in a kid’s candy bag which I didn’t think about at the time to the neighbor’s kid’s dismay.
Basic cake recipe
Ingredients:
4 eggs (free range or organic if you can afford it)
225g sugar caster
225g self raising flour
225g butter or margarine
1 tbsp vanilla extract
1 teaspoon of cocoa powder
Cooking chocolate block or if you are stuck a big block of standard chocolate or melt some bars will do
A cat mould (bought from a cake fare but you can buy these in any shape online) . A similar one on Amazon is https://amzn.to/3SlKmwZ or I love these https://amzn.to/3F80hfG.
Orange pre-bought sugar paste (https://amzn.to/3shFjmX)
Method:
1. You can use cup cake tin or pretty Halloween themed cases
2. Grease the tin by dipping a bit of kitchen roll in the butter and covering the inside of the tin lightly
3. Set the oven to 180 degrees c
4. Mix all the ingredients together and beat well. You don’t need to cream the butter, just mix well
5. Pour the mixture into the tin/cases leaving a slight dip in the middle as it will rise higher there
6. Cook for about 20 minutes until light and golden
7. When the cakes are cooled cut off the end of a piping (or sandwich/zip lock bag if you don’t have one) and fill will orange sugar paste
8. Squeeze the bag and pour in a circular direction. Practice a few times and you can fake some really cool looking icing. Leave the cakes to set somewhere cool
9. Melt the chocolate in the microwave for a few minutes. You can do it over a pan of simmering water but a few minutes in the microwave is so much easier. Just check it every 30 seconds to make sure it doesn’t burn
10. Pour the chocolate into moulds and put in the fridge to set (you can put in the freezer if you are feeling impatient but be careful as some types of chocolate go white and crystallise
11. When all cool push the chocolate onto the icing 7
Happy Halloween!
the modern mrs beeton 