In a world of digital, busy lifestyles, work, children and much more, day to day human interactions and even a smile or joke (not burdened with stress, work or a preoccupied mind) can get lost along the way.
For some of us baking isn’t a strong suit, for others, the time and incentive to bake can become buried by life. However, a great way to bring colleagues, classmates, even parties together is to run a bake off, and the results are surprisingly satisfying.
Inspired by bake offs (a business guest recently shared their bake off experience) and of course the upcoming spooky holiday, Leonardo Hotels has decided to collect together some delicious cupcake recipes (with score sheet for those who decide to bake off) for you bake, share and consume this Halloween…
You will need:
Cake Mixture
The cake mixture can be adjusted according to which flavourings you would like. This is a basic vanilla recipe so it is as easy as possible for you to tailor to your flavour of choice. If you want to put food colouring in, a couple of teaspoons should be sufficient or for chocolate cakes around 20g of cocoa powder to 100g flour is a good guide
Prep: under 30 mins
Cooking: 10-30mins
Feeds: 12
Preheat oven at 180C and fill muffin tin with cases.
Cream butter and sugar together until smooth, beat in the eggs slowly and stir in vanilla extract.
Fold in flour (if using cocoa powder mix with flour) until mixture is smooth adding milk as needed. If you are using food colouring add this in last- do a little at a time- it’s easier to add more than it is to remove (nigh on impossible). If you’re adding flavouring- orange or lemon, add the juice and rind in and mix.
Spoon into cases but no more than half way.
Bake for 10-15 minutes or until golden brown- but check it is cooked through by inserting a knife or skewer and coming out clean.
Set aside to cool.
Ingredients:
Methodology:
Beat the butter in a large bowl until soft. Add half of the icing sugar until smooth.
Add the remaining icing sugar, cocoa powder and one tablespoon of milk and beat until creamy. Add more milk if the icing needs loosening for spreading.
Smoothly spread buttercream on cool cupcakes.
Top each cupcake with a marshmallow head and create a face with the black gel.
Mix up a medium sized batch of white icing (enough to pipe on at least 12 skeleton figures) with the icing sugar and fill icing bag, pipe on skeleton stick figure with ribs and Voila - skeleton themed cupcakes!
Ingredients:
Beat the butter in a large bowl until soft. Add half of the icing sugar until smooth.
Add the remaining icing sugar, one tablespoon of milk, vanilla extract and beat until creamy. Add more milk if the icing needs loosening.
Place the buttercream in an icing bag and pipe icing onto cupcake leaving a large enough slit/oval shape for the eyes in the middle. Try to make the icing ruffled or layered to give the mummy effect. Pipe two dots in the space for the eyes and place a chocolate chip in the middle of each dot.
Result: Amazing Mummy Cupcakes - simple and creepy (this frosting goes best with chocolate cupcakes to make sure the eyes pop!).
Ingredients:
Methodology:
Beat the butter in a large bowl until soft. Add half of the icing sugar until smooth.
Add the remaining icing sugar, cocoa powder and one tablespoon of milk and beat until creamy. Add more milk if the icing needs loosening for spreading. Smoothly spread buttercream on cool cupcakes.
Crush chocolate wafers/biscuits/ Oreos (without the cream) until almost powdered. Dip each frosted cupcake in the crushed biscuit to create a look of dirt. Insert chocolate shortbread as tombstone and decorate with gel!
For a simple frosting that requires little actual decoration, food colouring is your best friend. Simply make the cupcake of your choice and a simple vanilla frosting (see recipes above) with some green, orange or red food colouring. This will add some theming to your cupcakes with no effort - just pipe on in a swirl and shower in chocolate sprinkles.
For those interested in organising a Halloween bake off, we have a ready prepared score sheet here - all you have to do is set a date and time, invite colleagues to participate and then bake!
Halloween is a day for kids and adults alike, bringing family and friends togeth...
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