What I baked for Halloween 2018

I *know* that Halloween is over, but I only just about got these baked in time for the big day and I really want to share them with you all! Halloween isn't one of my favourite times of year (I'm definitely all about the big C-word), but any excuse for getting festive in some way and I'm there. This is the first year I've fully embraced All Hallows Eve and I loved carving pumpkins, wearing dark lipstick and making a whole bunch of tasty treats. 

First I went with these bloody chocolate cupcakes. These were from the Tanya Bakes book, which is the best baking book I've ever come across (and I'm not a big fan of the woman herself, so it really is the contents I love!). You start with a standard chocolate cupcakes recipe ~ this Mary Berry one is pretty perfect if you add extra chocolate chips. Once the cupcakes are baked and cooled, you scoop out a bit of the cake, as though you were making butterfly cakes. Fill the absence with jam, and smother the cakes in orange butter icing (I used two whole tubes of gel food colouring for these!). When people bite into the cake, they get a jammy 'bloody' surprise.

These chocolate skeleton cookies were my favourite of the lot, because they made for the perfect non-sickly moreish treat. You use a fairly standard chocolate shortbread recipe (this one from Pinterest is ideal), gingerbread cutters, some white writing icing,  et voila. Even my un-artistic butt managed to make these actually resemble skeletons.

The finale was not quite a bake, as it never went near an oven, but it was a little recipe I found in the new Zoella Cordially Invited book (which I am loving!). These rice krispie pumpkins were much easier to make than I imagined, and were a whole lot of fun to do with my sister. There's a very similar recipe I found on Pinterest here, but instead of using chocolate as decoration, I used ready rolled icing for the faces and stems. We also added a little ginger and cinnamon to give them a bit of flavour.
And there we have it: my 2018 Halloween bakes! I'm already excited to start planning some Christmas bakes (and considering the disasters which will inevitably happen). I *did* also make meringue ghosts this year but wow they went in the bin before any photographic proof of their existence cropped up ... 
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