Halloween Preparation - Crealy and Pumpkin Carving

On Saturday we went to Crealy to take part in some Halloween fun…

There were lots of pumpkins to choose from (one free per child)…

Trick or treating (aka taking a lolly out of a witch’s hand!)…

And spooky games of which Izzy won one (each time the music stopped they had to “be” either a zombie, a ghost or a pumpkin. Izzy was a zombie every single time but the man never chose zombies to be out!!)

However, despite all the Halloween fun, the thing the children enjoyed most was something that is there year round…the animal barn…in particular the goats!

We also went on a few rides. Izzy and I went on the pirate ship (which was freezing!!) while Toby went on the carousel, and then Toby loved it so much that they went on the carousel again together…

This was the first time that Toby really “got” Crealy and was able to appreciate most of it. When he got off the carousel he was too busy excitedly chattering to me about it to pose for this photo…!!

After being forced to go through the shop (I was so annoyed when they got rid of the exit that avoided the shop, although the children are used to us saying no to buying things most times now, it was me that wanted to buy Halloween decorations!!)

we went home and Toby napped while Izzy and Liam got to work on the pumpkins…

Izzy was a bit grossed out by the pumpkin innards…and then got a bit hyper when she overcame her fear and got stuck in!

For pumpkin #1, Liam stuck with a relatively simple face design…

For pumpkin #2, Izzy had lost enthusiasm so gone off to play elsewhere, so Liam got a bit more creative with some ghosts!

Pumpkins…done! Toby thought they were very cool when he woke up!!

Do you celebrate Halloween? Any plans for tomorrow? We’re not doing much tomorrow. Izzy is going to a kids club all day which involves doing a show for the parents at the end of the day. They are encouraged to bring Halloween costumes if they have them so I’m hoping that Izzy’s witch outfit from last year still fits! Then in the evening I’ve bought a new DVD for us to watch while hoping the doorbell rings – we don’t go out trick or treating ourselves but Izzy absolutely loves giving out sweets to other children – she got so excited last year but we’re slightly more out the way in this house so I’m hoping we still get some callers! We will do a bit more Halloween stuff at the weekend though – I’m planning a Halloween “party” on Saturday for my family, but will show photos & ramble on more about that after its happened!

Pumpkin Ginger Cakes and Chocolate Apples - Baking Mad Review

A little while ago I was contacted to ask if I’d like to take a look at the bakingmad.com website and recreate a recipe. There are so many great looking recipes on that site, and after emailing ideas back and forth, they suggested that I take a particular look at the Halloween recipes. There were several creative recipes within that section of the website. I like the look of the Halloween cupcakes and will probably make some of them nearer to October 31st, but for today I decided to try out a fun activity with the children – Chocolate Dipped Apples…

The children were so excited to be making these straight after school today – as evidenced by the fact that there was “no time” to change out of uniform/coats!!

We had slight issues with dipping the chocolate covered apples in the sprinkles, so we ended up sprinkling directly from tub to apples in the end. Job done!

While the apples were setting, the most importing “job” of eating the leftover chocolate happened…

We ate these after dinner tonight – cute and tasty!!

With all the tempting recipes that are on the site, I couldn’t resist making a couple of others! This recipe wasn’t actually from the Halloween baking section, but it sounded quite “Halloweeny”/Autumnal to me! And of course it featured my favourite ingredient for this time of year... Pumpkin and Ginger Cupcakes…

I did make a couple of changes to the recipe. As you can see in the above picture, I used tinned pumpkin instead of grating fresh pumpkin (same weight, turned out absolutely fine, a lot easier!) and as I knew I wasn’t planning to make the icing (because I’ve frozen most of these for Izzy’s packed lunches), I added the equivalent of 100g milk chocolate chips to the recipe. I actually only made half the recipe and used smaller cupcake cases instead of my usual muffin cases – 13 cute mini cakes!

I could not get the insides of these to photograph clearly, so ended up eating 3 of these in the process, a delicious mistake!! Straight from the oven…

1.5 hours later when cool…

And an outside photo shoot too!!

These are absolutely divine! I will definitely be making this recipe again many more times throughout “pumpkin season”, and next time I’ll be making them bigger…for me!! I’ve already passed on the recipe to my sister-in-law and promised my Mum that I’ll save her one for when I’m seeing her on Thursday! I love the little chunks of stem ginger running through these, and found that the spices were a lot stronger once the cakes had cooled. The tinned pumpkin didn’t add a huge amount to the flavour (I always find the spices are the dominant flavour in pumpkin recipes anyway) but gave the cakes a lovely moist texture, no dryness in these cakes!

Finally, as I knew that Liam wouldn’t eat the pumpkin cakes, I decided to make him some rocky road…

To be honest, I’d been planning to make these for a while anyway, but as I was on the bakingmad.com website I decided to use their recipe for quantities. Their recipe contains brazil nuts which sounds lovely to me, but Liam is very fussy doesn’t like nuts combined with chocolate so I just used 150g biscuits and 150g marshmallows…the benefit of using marshmallows is that at least this is one baked good that I won’t eat!!

Thank you Baking Mad for introducing me to your website and letting me try some great recipes, I’ll definitely be coming back for more inspiration!

Have you ever used the bakingmad.com website before? What is your favourite Halloween, or Autumnal, treat to make at this time of year? My Mum's pumpkin pie is always a winner for me, but I do love trying out new recipes too!

*I was reimbursed for the ingredients used in this post, but all opinions on the website and the recipes I made are my own.*

Spooky Games at Granny's House!

Happy Halloween! :)

I took the children round to my Mum's house after school this afternoon for some Halloween fun! We had lots of treats...

Halloween chocolate, cupcakes that I made last week, and pumpkin pies from yesterday:

Plus some pumpkin seeds that I roasted in a Worcester sauce mix:

And games...

Apple bobbing:

Doughnuts on a string:

and feeling through green "worms" to find pumpkin seeds (each pumpkin seed = a chocolate for Izzy!):

Mum made a new, even darker green, batch of spaghetti for the children to eat for dinner. Spaghetti + water + green food colouring...

+ pesto + peas = Halloween dinner!

Izzy was initially put off by the appearance...

but luckily agreed to eat it after Mum tasted it first. Toby on the other hand loved it no matter what it looked like...

the boy does love his pasta!

Rather than end this post with slightly grim photos (sorry if you were reading this whilst trying to eat!), I'll leave you with a few of the cuter photos from the afternoon...

My little sister was our photographer as she didn't want to be in any photos!

Izzy had such a great time. She especially loved it when trick or treaters came round - she went running to the front door with a tin full of chocolates! We had two groups come round while we at my Mum's house, then another two groups when we got back to ours, and then a final two just as I was about to take Izzy to be - lucky timing! Liam & I took the pumpkin inside once the kids were in bed - trick or treaters are pretty good around here and only knock if you have a lit pumpkin out...well either that or we haven't heard them as our doorbell needs fixing!

Have you done anything for Halloween this year? And would you eat bright green spaghetti??!