Halloween Recipe: Ghost Chocolate Brownies

In the UK, Halloween usually falls during half term, so it’s a great excuse to get the kids in the kitchen to whip up some terrifying treats. Recently I’ve been throwing together quick batches of chocolate brownies for my boy, they’re a speedy bake and so popular. I decided to make my regular recipe extra spooky by adding a handful of spooky spectres. Here are my easy ghost chocolate brownies, which make a fine addition to a Halloween party.

Essentially these are regular chocolate brownies, but with spooky ghost shapes popped on top. I cut my brownies into just six very greedy pieces, mostly becasue we’d made quite big ghosts, and party because we just really are that greedy. Sensible people could probably cut their brownies into 12 or even 16 pieces. Just make sure you have a little ghost for each one.

The ghosts are really simple to make. I bought a pack of white royal icing, broke it into small pieces, and then the boy and I made ghost shapes by rolling them out and shaping them. We gave each spectre a spooky face with some black writing icing, which is pretty widely available in supermarkets and online. We had a great time making them, it’s a fun thing to do with the children.

This is my favourite chocolate brownie recipe. It uses very little flour and the brownies are so moreish. A ghostly plate of these brownies is sure to be popular at any Halloween gathering.

Ghost Chocolate Brownies

Ingredients:

250g milk chocolate
250g unsalted butter
4 medium eggs
250g sugar
2 heaped tablespoons self raising flour
2 heaped tablespoons cocoa powder
60ml of vegetable oil
1/3 pack of white ready to roll royal icing
1 tube of black writing icing

Halloween Recipe: Ghost Chocolate Brownies

How to make your Ghost Chocolate Brownies:

Pre-heat your oven to 185° and line a deep sided baking dish with baking parchment.

In a bowl, over a pan of simmering water, melt the chocolate and the butter together until smooth. In a separate bowl, mix the sugar and the eggs, whisk them until they’re light and fluffy.

Pass the flour, cocoa powder through a fine sieve and add to the eggs and sugar. Gently whisk the ingredients together until combined. Then mix in the melted chocolate and the vegetable oil to combine.

Bake for 35-45 minutes until the brownies have lost their wobble but are still a bit gooey inside. Take out and leave to cool. You want to almost under bake them so they are still soft in the centre.

Make your royal icing ghost shapes whenever you want. I prefer to make mine a day or two before I need them so they firm up a little. But it’s fine to make them just before you are decorating your brownies.

To make them, cut off blobs of the icing and roll them out. Try and guess the size of ghost you need for each brownie square. Using a spoon or a blunt butter knife, shape them into the kind of spooky shape you want. Put each one on a piece of baking paper so they’re not sticking to your work surface. Using a tube of black writing icing, draw a ghostly face on each one. Set them to one side for now. They can be happily left in the fridge or another cool place for a few days if you’re making them ahead of time.

Halloween Recipe: Ghost Chocolate Brownies

Once the chocolate brownies are cool, cut them into squares and then lay a ghostly figure on top of each square. These are my favourite brownies ever. I urge you to give them a try.

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Halloween Recipe: Ghost Chocolate Brownies

Halloween Recipe: Creepy Chocolate Cupcakes

In the UK, Halloween usually falls during half term, so it’s a great excuse to get the kids in the kitchen to whip up some terrifying treats. This year time was short and energy was low, so we made a quick batch of creepy chocolate cupcakes and decorated them in a suitably spooky style.

I usually have a decent selection of cake sprinkles in the cupboard, and I’d stocked up for the occasion with some edible eyes, food colouring and some Halloween sprinkles from Cake Angels. So we were well prepared to make some spooky bakes.

Halloween Recipe: Creepy Chocolate Cupcakes

This recipe makes approximately 24 cupcakes.

Creepy Chocolate Cupcakes

Ingredients:
200 g caster sugar
200 g softened butter or margarine (I use Stork)
4 eggs, beaten
1 tsp vanilla extract
1.5 tbsp milk
25g cocoa powder
175 g self-raising flour
1 tsp baking powder

To decorate
2 large bars of white chocolate
1 pack of edible eyes
Food colouring, we used green
Assorted Halloween sprinkles

Method:
Heat your fan oven to 190c. Get two bun trays and set out your cupcake liners in each tray. You will need about 24 of these.

In a large bowl, beat your butter and sugar together until fluffy (I used a hand mixer). Add the eggs, milk and vanilla and combine, then add the cocoa powder, flour and baking powder and mix together until you have a smooth batter.

Using a dessert spoon, dollop an equal amount of the mixture in each cupcake liner and then bake in your pre-heated oven for 15-18 minutes. If you’re feeling like being precise, then you can weigh your cupcakes to make sure they are all the same size.

Once baked, take your cupcakes out of the oven and leave them to cool on a cooling rack. Once they are cool, you can set to work decorating them.

Halloween Recipe: Creepy Chocolate Cupcakes

Break up your two bars of white chocolate and put them in a microwave proof bowl. Microwave in short blasts until it is just about melting, stir with a small spoon until it is smooth and lump free. Beware! White chocolate melts much quicker than milk or dark chocolate, so this won’t take long.

Once melted, add a small splash of food colouring and mix it through, add more and stir until you get the shade of creepy you are looking for.

When you’re happy with your coloured chocolate, drop a small spoonful on the top of each bun. Swirl it around a bit with the back of the spoon to spread it around, the chocolate will naturally spread a bit. When you’re happy, it’s time to decorate with those edible eyes or the Halloween sprinkles.

Halloween Recipe: Creepy Chocolate Cupcakes

Once decorated, leave the creepy chocolate cupcakes somewhere cool and out of the way of hungry children (and adults) until the chocolate sets. Once it has set, they’re ready to eat.

We had a lovely time making these very simple little cakes. They were so easy to make, but light as a feather and they looked suitable spooky for Halloween.

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Halloween Recipe: Creepy Chocolate Cupcakes

Halloween Recipe: Creepy Chocolate Bark

With half term in full swing and the weather being predictably dismal, we’ve got a packed week of baking and crafting planned to keep us busy. One of the easiest things we do is chocolate bark, I’ve no idea why is called chocolate bark, but it is. With Halloween just days away, we thought I t would be rude not to make a batch of Halloween Chocolate Bark.

Chocolate bark is essentially melted chocolate with sweets, dried fruit or nuts sprinkled on top. Leave it to set and then chop it up into chucks to be gobbled down by the family. It’s easy and a fun thing for kids to get involved with.

Halloween Recipe: Creepy Chocolate Bark

When we’ve had play dates (in pre-covid times) we’ve often done something like this as an activity. At the start of the play date, they decorate their own melted chocolate puddle with sweets, and by the time it’s time to go home, they can take home their own little bag of chocolate bark.

You can theme these up depending on the time of the year. I’ve done Easter and Christmas bark, all with seasonal treats. This week, with it being Halloween at the weekend, we made Halloween chocolate bark. Lots of supermarkets and sweet shops have spooky themed sweets. I spotted some perfectly grim things in Co-op to make our Halloween chocolate bark extra gruesome. Go wild, go grim, let your imaginations run wild.

Halloween Recipe: Creepy Chocolate Bark

Halloween chocolate bark

Ingredients:
300g milk chocolate
A variety of sweets, I used brains, eyeballs and strawberry laces

How to make your Halloween chocolate bark:
Get a small baking tray and cover with baking paper, make some room in your fridge for the tray later.

Break the chocolate up into chunks and either carefully melt it in the microwave or over a Bain Marie (a bowl over a pan of hot water). I usually do this in the microwave in 30 second blasts, stirring in between. It took about 3 minutes to melt the chocolate for this. Do not do this all in one go as you risk your chocolate going grainy if you don’t keep an eye on it.

Once your chocolate is melted, carefully pour it out onto your baking paper and with a spoon smooth it out a little. You don’t want it spread too thinly, it needs to be at least the thickness of a pound coin.

Halloween Recipe: Creepy Chocolate Bark

Decorate the still warm chocolate with your spooky sweets. Once you’re happy, pop the tray in the fridge for an hour or so until it’s set. Once the chocolate has hardened, using a sharp knife, chop it up into chunky bite size pieces and gobble down greedily.

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Halloween Recipe: Creepy Chocolate Bark

Halloween Recipe: Gingerbread Mummies

I love gingerbread, it’s one of my guilty pleasures. Often when I pass the bakery on the way to picking my boy up from school, I’ll slip in and buy a couple of gingerbread men, women or penguins for us both as a little treat. I like my gingerbread spicy, so I’m always a little generous when I make my own, like with these spicy gingerbread mummies for Halloween.

Halloween Recipe: Gingerbread Mummies

This week we got a new set of kids baking equipment, so we were keen to test it out and I was keen to bake a batch of gingerbread people for Halloween. The recipe is a tired and tested one; I’m not sure where it came from, but it’s been used many times over the years and my butter and flour splattered recipe book can attest. Like I said, I like it extra spicy, so if you want a milder gingerbread, then maybe halve the quantity of the spices.

As Halloween is round the corner, we wanted to make Gingerbread Mummies. These are especially easy for kids and for not very confident decorators to do. You just drizzle the icing over to look like bandages. If I’d been more on it, I’d have bought a pack of sugar eyes which you can stick on to add to the spookiness.

Halloween Recipe: Gingerbread Mummies

This recipe makes a surprising number of gingerbread men. Admittedly I use a pretty small cutter, but I managed to make 40 of them. They didn’t last the weekend though, not with my greedy family. They keep well in a sealed tin or container, so don’t feel like you too have to eat them all within 48 hours.

Spicy Gingerbread Mummies

Ingredients
350g plain flour, plus extra for rolling out
1 level teaspoon of bicarbonate of soda
2 fairly heaped teaspoons of ground ginger
2 fairly heaped teaspoons of allspice
125g baking margarine
175g caster sugar or soft brown sugar
1 large egg
4 tbsp golden syrup
To decorate
100g icing sugar
Warm water, a few drops at a time
Sugar eye decorations (optional)

Halloween Recipe: Gingerbread Mummies

Method
Using a large bowl, sift the plain flour, bicarb of soda, ginger and all spice and the pan mix together, I use a food processor as it saves getting overly sticky fingers and it’s quicker.

Tip in the margarine and mix until it looks like breadcrumbs. Stir in the sugar and then add a large egg and the golden syrup. This is where things get really sticky, mix thoroughly in the food mixer until it all comes together.

Wrap the dough in cling film, or pop in a clean plastic bag and refrigerate for half an hour or so. Once the dough is rested, it’s ready to roll!

At this point, I set up a bit of a gingerbread production line. I line two of my biggest baking trays with baking paper and pre-heat my oven to 180 degrees.
I divine the dough into four and on a floured surface, I roll out one of the pieces of dough. It needs to be about half a centimetre thick.

Carefully using your gingerbread cutter, cut out as many shapes as you can manage, roll out and cut again until you have filled your two trays. You need a bit of space around them, and I did trays of 8 figures, baking two trays at a time. In all I baked 5 trays, which is enough gingerbread mummies for a party!

Bake each tray for 12 minutes, maybe a minute it two more. They need to be lightly brown. Take them out of the oven and leave them to cool for 10 minutes or so. If you try to take them off the tray sooner, they will likely break. After 10 minutes, remove them from the baking paper and leave to cool fully on a wire rack.

Once they are cool, then you can decorate them. I sifted 100g of icing sugar into a bowl and gradually added drips and drops of water, mixing all the time. You need it to be thick but runny enough for it to drizzle off the spoon.

To decorate, I put my gingerbread mummies back on the baking paper I’d used (it saves you getting sticky icing everywhere) and using a teaspoon, I drizzled the icing across the mummies so it looks like bandages.

If I’d managed to get some sugar eyes, I would have stuck those on using some of my drizzly icing too. They looked pretty cool and my boy thought they were the perfect Halloween sweet treat.

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Halloween Recipe: Gingerbread Mummies

Recipe: Honey Spiced Pumpkin Pie

Pumpkin Pie is one of those things most English people have heard of, but for the most part have never tried. Every year we seem to embrace Halloween traditions a little bit more, and each year more and more pumpkin-spiced things creep onto our menus. I keep trying pumpkin and wondering what all the fuss is about. I’m not a huge fan, but would a slice of homemade pumpkin pie change my mind?

Recipe: Honey Spiced Pumpkin Pie

This recipe is really simple. You can make your own pastry or you can buy a ready-made sweet pastry case, or so what I did and buy some ready rolled shortcrust pastry. Sometimes, just sometimes it’s absolutely fine to be lazy!

Honey Spiced Pumpkin Pie

Ingredients (serves 8)
3 eggs, beaten
1 425g tin of pumpkin puree (or make your own)
125g runny honey
80g soft brown sugar
200mls milk (I used semi skimmed)
1 teaspoon ground ginger
½ teaspoon ground nutmeg
1 teaspoon of ground cinnamon
Pinch of salt
1 shortcrust pastry case (9 inch)

Method
1. Pre-heat your oven to 200°. Prepare your pastry case. if you’re using a ready-made case go to step 2. If you’re making your own or ruing ready rolled pastry then follow these instructions –

Grease your 9 inch pie tin and place on a baking sheet. Roll out your pastry and press into the pie tin evenly. I like to leave my pastry untrimmed around the edges of the pie, then tidy them up once the pie is cooked.

Prick the bottom of your pie, top with a piece of baking paper and over in baking beans. Put in the oven for 10 minutes. Remove from the oven, remove the baking beans and paper and bake for another 5 minutes.

2. In a large bowl, beat your eggs, then add your pumpkin puree, milk, sugar, honey, spices and salt. Mix very thoroughly. Carefully pour the filling into pastry case. I liked to do this about half way, then put it in the oven and continue filling the pie, this stops it sloshing about when you’re putting your pie in the oven.

3. Bake at 200 C for 45 minutes until it’s cooked though. If you’re not sure, it shouldn’t wobble too much and you can always poke it with a knife to see if it comes out clean.

Recipe: Honey Spiced Pumpkin Pie

Do not make the same mistake as me. In my excitement I pulled the pie straight out of the oven to admire its beauty once it was cooked. BIG MISTAKE. What I should have done is turned the oven off and opened the door a tiny bit, then after a bit longer, opened the door some more and let the pie cool in the oven. Pulling it out too quickly shocked it and made it crack. This made me very sad.

If you’ve made the fatal error of taking your pie out of the oven and it cracks like this, do not despair! All you need it a lot of cream. Whip it up and top your pie before serving. No one will ever know the unsightly horrors which lurk beneath!

Has my recipe for Honey Spiced Pumpkin Pie made me fall in love with pumpkin? Not really. It was very nice and the boys absolutely devoured the lot. I just think me and pumpkins just aren’t meant to be.

Recipe: Honey Spiced Pumpkin Pie