Halloween

Time flies! Halloween has already come and gone, and before you know it Christmas lights will be shining all along the streets.

These past couple weeks have been really busy with school/work and extra-curricular activities (I sound like I'm in grade school!) I managed to bake a couple things to keep myself sane, but I haven't had much opportunity to write up posts. So I thought I'd give a little summary of the things I've baked over the past week or two.  

As I mentioned above, Halloween was this past Monday. I love Halloween! It's my favourite holiday (if it event counts as one). My favourite thing is decorating my house to look as creepy as possible and see how many kids I can scare! There is nothing more rewarding than hearing from a parent their child was too scared to come up to my house!

At work/school we usually have a Halloween potluck and surprise, surprise, I tend to bring Halloween-themed desserts. Last year I made 'petit fours' shaped like ghosts, and this year I decided to make a graveyard cake! Complete with dirt, a rocky path, pumpkins, chocolate shortbread tombstones and meringue ghosts and bones.

The cake was my trusty red velvet cake, filled with a raspberry filling. I admit, I bought the cream cheese icing, the pumpkins and the rocks, but otherwise the tombstones and ghosts/bones were home made. I think it was a big hit, and people even went back for seconds!

Another thing I love about Halloween is all the leftover candy! Not only is it perfect for eating, but it's also awesome to put in your baking. This year my costume for Halloween was "smartie pants". To make my costume, I bought 20 boxes of smarties (of which I only used 16) and cut out the smarties logo and sewed them to my pants. Needless to say, 16 boxes of smarties yields a lot of leftover smarties! So I needed something to do with them.

And the smuffin was born! As the name implies, they are simply smartie muffins. Nothing too fancy. I just found a chocolate chip muffin recipe and replaced the chocolate chips with some whole and chopped up smarties. Here is the recipe I used:

Smuffins

Yields approximately 12 muffins. Adapted from Chocolate Chip Muffins from the allrecipes website.

2 cups all-purpose flour

1/2 cup white sugar

3 teaspoons baking powder

1 cup milk

1/2 cup vegetable oil

1 egg

1 tsp vanilla

A  bunch of smarties (probably equivalent to 3/4 cups)

3 tbsp white sugar                   

2 tbsp brown sugar

Directions

1. Heat oven to 400 degrees F. Line muffin sheet with baking cups.
2. In a medium bowl, combine flour, 1/2 cup sugar, baking powder, chocolate chips; mix well. In a small bowl, combine milk, oil and egg; blend well. Add dry ingredients all at once; stir just until dry ingredients are moistened (batter will be lumpy.)
3. Fill cups 2/3 full. Sprinkle tops of muffins before baking with a combination of 3 tablespoons sugar and 2 tablespoon brown sugar.
4. Bake for 20 to 25 minutes or until toothpick inserted in center comes out clean. Cool 1 minute before removing from pan. Serve warm.               

I think the smarties were a hit or miss ingredient. I enjoyed their creaminess, whereas others prefer the robust taste of chocolate chips. So I guess it's up to you if you want to use smarties or just plain old chocolate chips. It is a good basic recipe regardless of what you use!

Well that's what I've been up to recently! And I can't wait to share my next recipe with you - it's one of my favourites!