Halloween Wrap-up

A few of our Halloween baking endeavors.  Nothing turned out great, but they were all fun to make and we will probably recreate them again next year.

Our neighborhood has a Halloween party every year.  In addition to lots of games there is a chili cook off and a cake walk.  My husband enters the chili cook off and has come in 2nd place every year so if you have an award winning recipe please send it!  I usually do a cake for the cake walk.   I had been planning on doing one again this year, but the kids decided they wanted to do something and I didn't have enough time to do two cakes.  So I  baked up some cupcakes for the kids, bought lots of fun candy and let them go at it.  The results were candy loaded cupcake monsters.

I had seen a great idea on Pintrest - talk about evil and scary, that site just sucks time away from me - for a meatloaf hand.  I have been excited all month to make it.  I don't cook meals for the family on the weekend so the meatloaf hand became Mike's job.  They looked great going into the oven, but they broke apart during baking.  He formed the hand by making the main part and then attaching the fingers.  Next year we will make it by forming one mass of meat into a hand shape and hopefully it will stay together.  Although, the kids did find it very entertaining to eat the fingers, or the toes as they called them.

We went trick-or-treating on Monday so we needed a quick meal between school, homework and heading out.  Which could mean only one thing - mummy dogs!

Now that Halloween is over, I guess it is time to start preparing for Thanksgiving and Christmas!

Halloween Cake

We had our neighborhood Halloween party this weekend.  One of the events is a cakewalk, which is always popular, but this year prizes were given out for the best decorated.  There were a lot of great cakes, but there could only be one winner and the winner was my candy barrel cake.  It is definitely a cool looking cake, but there is not much decoration on it and I think there were other cakes that should have won.  My favorite was the Frankenstein.  This cake is very easy to make and is great if you need something last minute, but still want a lot of wow factor.  It is made using two 9" round cakes stacked, I filled the layers with just buttercream, but you could add your favorite filling.  Ice the entire cake, you don't need to worry about the appearance, I didn't bother with a crumb coating and just added one thick coating.  Before the icing sets stick candy bars around the outside of the cake, I used Kit Kats, they work out perfectly as they are just a little taller than the cakes, but there are a lot of other options - peppermint sticks would be fun for a winter themed cake.   Cover the top of the cake with M&M's or your favorite small candy hiding as much of the icing as you can.  I used one and a half large bags of peanut M&M's which is a lot of candy, but makes for a fun cake.  This cake is not easy to cut.  When serving at a party I find it is easier to disassemble it before cutting and then giving a little bit of the different candies with each piece.  If you are enjoying it in the privacy of your own home I say just pick away at it and enjoy.

Lollipop Cookies

 
 Aggie had a friend over today and wanted to make cookies.  I had planned on making sugar cookie dough earlier in the day then let the girls cut-out and decorate, but I didn't get a chance to make the dough and give it time to chill.  Martha must have known I needed something - I like to think Martha and I are on the same wave length -  and sent this recipe for Lollipop Cookies, in the daily cookie e-mail, it was the perfect solution.  The girls were able to make the dough, decorate the cookies and enjoy, all in the 3 hour playdate, which meant Aggie's little friend was able to take some of the cookies home.  A win win situation for all. 

The girls had a great time working together and were pretty co-operative.  I had them take turns measuring out the ingredients and tried to break the measurements down as much as possible.  At four they don't understand the math, but telling them we need one cup of flour and have them measure it out using the 1/4 cup measurer gives everybody lots of opportunity to measure while hearing math concepts.  They spent a lot of time playing with the flour, which is a really important part of cooking for kids this age.   Giving kids the opportunity to play with ingredients and explore the texture, smell and overall feel helps gives them a good understanding of the ingredient and eventually how the ingredient changes and can be used.  With my youngest I often give her something like flour, sugar, cornstarch or beans and let her play with the item while I am working with my older two.  It distracts her giving us an opportunity to work, but is also helping her learn about the item.

The only problem the girls had was when it came time to clean, they both wanted to sweep and had a hard time sharing the task.  Definitely not the worst problem to deal with and I hope my girl will always fight for the opportunity to sweep my kitchen floor.  I know I will never stand in her way.