Pumpkin Cupcakes

So as Joseph has requested cupcakes for his upcoming Halloween birthday party, I thought I should test out a few recipes. Using the Libby's tinned pumpkin puree that I found in Waitrose, I first tried this recipe here, it really helps to have a set of American measuring cups when using US recipes, I found mine on e-bay. These turned out well, but was defiantly a muffin recipe, I don't think they would have worked very well iced. I made this 1st batch the day before the Macmillan coffee morning at school so was thrilled (its the little things) to be able to use this idea I had pinned ages ago of threading ribbon through a hole punched paper plate.

I then tried this recipe which uses half the amount of pumpkin, this will be the recipe I will use for Josephs party as it has a much lighter more cakey texture. I really must concentrate more when baking as I managed to make this batch & put it in the cases without the eggs! I ended up scooping it back into the bowl, binning the cases, adding the egg & using new cases..

Later that day I made a couple of batches of icing for the cakes. I managed to mess up both the butter cream & the cream cheese frosting, somehow they ended up runny! I think I used too much water in the butter cream & I'm assuming that light cream cheese doesn't work! On the plus side i made a second batch of butter cream using the recipe on the back & just adding a tiny bit of milk & it turned out much better (the pink one). I think with enough sprinkles on top they will be passable for the party...

x Jo x

Top 20 Halloween Party Food Ideas

So following on from my 'Top 20 Halloween Messy Play & Craft Ideas' post, I'm now thinking about what food to make for Joseph's Halloween birthday party...

Joseph has requested cupcakes & now I have located tinned pumpkin here in the UK (waitrose), I'm thinking that pumpkin cake it will be... just need to work out how to decorate them!

 

Spiced Pumpkin Muffins - Stylist.co.uk

Oreo Owl Cupcakes -One Charming Party

Monster Cupcakes - The Decorated Cookie

And for some party food...

Satsuma Pumpkins - The Old Green Cupboard

Banana Ghosts & Satsumas

Strawberry Ghosts

Mini Witch Hats - Mummy Mishaps

Frankinstein Pudding Cups - A Turtles Life For Me

Ghost Jelly - Party Blue Prints Blog

Vampire Gingerbread - The Glass Eye

Olive Spider Eggs

Spider Crackers - Thrifty Fun

Hot Dog Mummys

Mummy Pizza's

Cheese Balls = Pumpkin Poop!

Marshmallows = Ghost Poop!

Mousse Filled Witches Hats - The Crazy Kitchen

Rice Crispie Frankensteins

Ghost Biscuits - Nicholes Treats

Mummy Juices

Just need to find time to make it all ....

x Jo x

Tea Party Week @ Messy Play

For our 4th week of messy fun I decided to go for a tea party theme, mainly so we could do some cupcake decorating! So that's what we did, I bought 3 dozen ready made cupcakes from the supermarket (didn't want to be poisoning any kids) & lots of sprinkles & sweets to decorate. In the hour we used almost a box of icing sugar & I spent most of the session mixing icing. The kids decorated all the cakes & then moved on to the pack of biscuits I brought as back up :-) It was a really busy session, & I didn't get chance to take any pics of the set up & not many during the session.

I dyed the pasta left from animal week, using the same method I use   a little bit of food colouring & some surgical spirit (rubbing alcohol for those in the us) in a zip lock bag. Mix it around to cover the pasta & add more colouring if required. I've previously had poor results using the natural colouring vs regular, as i was out of green I thought I would give the gel colouring a go. It did give better coverage however left a slightly sticky residue on the pasta. 

I supplied lengths of string so that the kids could make necklaces to wear to the 'party'. I also made some 'needles' with some pipe cleaner for the younger ones to make the threading easier.

For the sticking craft I printed out a cupcake picture & decorated using fabric, paper & foam scraps, lolly pop sticks & sequins. I had some ready coloured lolly sticks, but wanted to make sure i had enough so i tried a colouring them using food colouring at the same time as the pasta, it worked but not very well. I then used a chunky marker to colour them in this was quite quick & gave a better result. A great way to recycle all those lolly sticks you've been saving all summer.

My example cupcake (I'm having great fun doing my own pictures)

In the sensory box we had red jelly & custard.... this started out nice & thick but ended up all thin & watery as the kids mixed it.

In one of our pools we had out our tea set, with our coloured rice to use as pretend tea.

In the other pool I put a whole bag of asda value cornflakes, they had lots of fun crunching & scooping.

Daniel (3) requested that we had pink paint at messy play, so as it was tea party week, i mixed some up using our red & white paint. It ended up a peachy pink, I also mixed a purple which ended up darker than I would have liked. As well as the brushes I also cut an old car sponge out in to sort of cupcake shapes.

A fab week again with a long clean up, but worth it as all the kids love it. Especially my boys who wouldn't get to experience this otherwise. It really is different experience from doing these activity's at home.

x Jo x

P.S. The next theme is The Hungry Caterpillar

Sweet Treats

As we had some chocolate Santa's, left over from Christmas, we decided to do some kid friendly cooking. At my slimming world group Christmas party someone brought along chocolate covered grapes on cocktail sticks, they were delicious! As they boys have never been keen on grapes, i thought it would be a fun activity to encourage them to try some. 

They broke up there Santa's in to a bowl & I then melted it in the microwave. Be careful not to burn the chocolate, I find a plastic bowl works better than a ceramic one. Once melted we stuck a cocktail stick in each grape & then dipped it in to the chocolate. I gave the boys a piece of cucumber each to put the cocktail sticks in while the chocolate was hardening. Once they had finished we put them in the fridge to harden. Both Joseph (4) & Daniel (2.5) enjoyed eating the chocolate grapes at snack time. Daniel has since been enjoying grapes (without chocolate) however Joseph says that he only likes the chocolate ones! As Joseph isn't really a big fruit eater I might try giving him several fruits to try with a chocolate dip. I also found this recipe on Pintrest which looks good.

We still had 2 chocolate Santa's left! With these we decided to make the classic rice krispie cakes with a twist. To our melted chocolate we added a mix of rice krispies, cheerios, sultanas, & dried cranberries. We then spooned the mix in to cake cases. The boys love making these cakes as they can decorate them straight away, we used sprinkles, silver balls, red sugar sprinkles & cherries. Daddy very much enjoyed helping the boys eat up these cakes!

x Jo x