Halloween!

100 Word Drabble (short story); Prompt: chocolate, pumpkin

“Michelle, I’m done.” Called Sean, “Can you turn on the tap for me?”

Michelle walked into the kitchen and went to help her husband.

“Ugh, pumpkin guts!” Michelle groaned, looking at Sean’s hands. “Is it ready to carve now?”

“Yes. Can we please do something scary looking, not some cutesy pumpkin you’d like?

“Fine, I guess. Next year we’ll buy two pumpkins.”

The two found a vampire template online and started carving.

“Oh” blurt Michelle, “we need tea light candles. Can you go buy some please?”

After he reluctantly agreed she called out, “And some mini chocolate bars too, babe?”

———————————————————–

Now, I am a little bit late on this post, as Halloween was almost a month ago! But better late than never right?

For teenagers, it a little hard to find fun things to do on Halloween. We are a little too old to go Trick-or-Treating (although that doesn’t stop some people!) and if you don’t like to party then you are normally stuck at home handing out candy. Well this year my youth group at church decided to have a little party. So we all brought treats and dressed up in costumes. There were fun board games, like a Boys vs. Girls trivia game, and physical games, like volleyball. Everyone had tons of fun and left quite full! I only wish I had taken more pictures!

For my treat I baked (Bet you couldn’t guess that!)! I baked up my favourite chocolate cupcake recipe, used a trusted icing recipe that I tinted orange and sprinkled some crushed oreos on top. They turned out quite well if I say so myself!

One Bowl Chocolate Cake III  (found here on AllRecipes.com)

Ingredients:

• 2 cups white sugar
• 1 3/4 cups all-purpose flour
• 3/4 cup unsweetened cocoa powder
• 1 1/2 teaspoons baking powder
• 1 1/2 teaspoons baking soda
• 1 teaspoon salt
• 2 eggs
• 1 cup milk
• 1/2 cup vegetable oil
• 2 teaspoons vanilla extract
• 1 cup boiling water

Directions:

Turn the oven on to 350* F. This recipe makes 24 good sized cupcakes, or it makes two nine inch round pans. Set up these now, either greasing the big pans, or putting cups in the cupcake pan.

Find a large bowl, as it’s going to have to hold all the ingredients. I suggest a really deep one, because of all the liquids! Also, if possible use a bowl with an easy to pour edge. Stir (or sift) together the sugar, flour, cocoa, baking powder, baking soda and the salt (the first six ingredients). Add the eggs, milk, oil and vanilla. Use a mixer and mix it all together for 2 minutes on a medium speed. CAREFULLY stir in the boiling water last. My recipe is covered in chocolate splats, and not just because I make it a lot! I guess I am an aggressive stirrer! The batter is going to be very runny and thin. The recipe on AllRecipes says this, but I didn’t realize the first time how runny it would actually be. So don’t worry, it’s going to be very thin!!

Now you can pour the batter into your pans.

Bake the cakes for 30- 35 minutes, and then cool for 10 minutes. Remove the cakes from the pan and let cool on the wire cooling racks. For the cupcakes, I set the timers for 15 minutes, and then checked them often after that.

Quick and Almost-Professional Buttercream Icing (here on AllRecipes.com)

Ingredients:

• 1 cup butter, room temperature
• 1 tablespoon vanilla
• 4 cups confectioner’s sugar (aka icing sugar)
• 1/4 cup milk
• food colour

Directions:

Cream the butter using a hand mixer or wooden spoon until smooth and fluffy. Beat in a little bit of sugar at a time until it’s all in. Beat in the vanilla. Pour in the milk and beat for 3-4 more minutes. Add in the food colouring.

Notes:

• This isn’t the original amount of the icing because the original is for only a few cupcakes. This recipe is it doubled. It more than iced 24 cupcakes, and I think I am very generous with my icing. But while there was extra icing, if you make it smaller the amounts are weird! But if you follow the link with the recipe to the website, it lets you change the yield amount, which is very handy!
• Believe it or not, this cake recipe is even better the longer you wait after you bake it! So if you want to take this cake recipe somewhere, you should make it whenever you have time before hand!
• You can substitute the boiling water in the cake for juice or anything really. For my mom’s birthday last March I wanted to make her a chocolate raspberry cake, so I made this recipe and used raspberry juice instead, and added raspberries on top of the icing. It was delicious! I was thinking of using orange kool-aid instead of the water for Halloween, but I decided it had enough sugar already!
• I have no idea how much food colouring I used for this icing, but it was a lot! It’s hard to make orange frosting and not peach!
• I think this icing is perfect for piping it. I love piping. I got an inexpensive basic Wilton icing kit. And as always, you can add more milk if it’s too thick for you, or add icing sugar if it’s too thin. But I’ve never had to do either for this recipe.

Final Pictures:

Iced, but there was one more step…

Here we go!

Some Oreo crumbs sprinkled on to give it a more Halloween-y feel with the Orange and Black.

Andd… One more! A close up!

The end of my real first blog post! Please comment and leave me any suggestions for improvement!

It is actually pretty weird that both my recipes are from AllRecipes today! I guess it just shows how trusted and true they are, because I almost never go there anymore!

My next post should be pretty soon, as I am now settled here at WordPress and I am baking this weekend for my brother-in-laws birthday!

So until next time!
-Leah