Chocolate Popcorn, Spooky Cakes, Pumpkin Soup and Pie-tatoes for Halloween

Food is such an integral part of every festival and Halloween is no exception.  My memories of Halloween feature the Brownie Guide Fancy Dress Party for which we all had to carve a 'Turnip' lantern.  There were no pumpkins in 1960s Scotland, so we used turnips/swedes, it was really hard work carving them and many a spoon was bent in the process.

At the party there would be large dishes of  buttery mashed potato and others of peppery, mashed 'neeps' the inside of those turnip lanterns cooked and mashed!  We also had 'Treacle Scones', girdle scones dangling on strings that you had to try to take a bite from as someone swung the string so you got covered in sticky treacle.  That was soon washed off with the 'Dookin' for Apples', the only way to be sure of getting your apple was to stick your head right down to the bottom of the bowl and bite hard into the apple, you got soaked but it worked.  I always hated it when, at some parties, they made you drop forks into the bowl, it was not nearly as effective.

There were none of the fancy themed sweets and cakes to be bought in the shops, but I think it is much more fun to make your Halloween treats at home.


Chocolate Popcorn Triangles are a really fun and simple treat to make with your kids, you don't really need a recipe, just melt some chocolate in a bowl over a pan of just simmering water and add ready made popcorn until it is all covered in chocolate, then press it into a brownie pan lined with non stick paper and place in the fridge until set.  I decorated mine with some lines of white chocolate.  I have a neat little trick for melting chocolate for piping (see below).




All you do it put your chocolate, I used Hadleigh Maid white chocolate buttons, into a disposable piping bag, pop it in the microwave for 30 seconds or until the chocolate has melted, then snip off the end of the bag and pipe lines over the chocolate popcorn in lines.  Leave to set in the fridge again, then once set, cut into squares or triangles.


For some rather more spooky cakes, a Halloween themed silicon cake mould is ideal for a bit of impact, especially if you top them with chocolate set in the same moulds.

I coloured white chocolate with orange food colouring to make the pumkin colour and it wasn't too difficult to make the two coloured witchy pumpkin with milk chocolate for the hat.

Spooky Halloween Cakes

175g  Flora Buttery
175g  golden caster sugar
300g  self raising flour, sieved
3 medium eggs
5 tbsp semi-skimmed milk
100g cooked pumpkin or butternut squash, mashed
zest of an orange

150g white chocolate
100g milk chocolate
orange food gel

Spooky silicon cake mould  and 6 muffin cases in a muffin tray (if no cake mould then 12 muffin cases)


1. Place the muffin cases into a muffin tray.
2. Place the first five ingredients in a bowl and beat with a wooden spoon until the mixture is smooth.
3. Stir in pumpkin mash and orange zest and divide between the paper cases.
4. Bake in a pre-heated oven for 20-25 minutes at 200C, 180C (fan), Gas mark 6 for 20-25 minutes.

Leave the cakes to cook and then unmould.  The shapes don't come out too well with the soft sponge cake but they are the perfect shape to top with the chocolate shapes.





It's not just sweet treats that are needed at Halloween.  You need something warm to eat before going out trick or treating.  Knorr have some great recipes which will hit the spot, how about a bowl of warming Pumpkin and Butterbean Broth from a recipe created by Marco Pierre White?  Or the perfect individual 'Sheperd's Pie-tatoes' a variation on Marco's Shepherd's Pie.


Shepherd's Pie-tatoes (or Shepherd's Potato Pies)
makes 8 Pie-tatoes

4 large baking potatoes

1 tbsp olive oil
1 medium onion, chopped
1 garlic clove, chopped
500g minced lamb
10g plain flour
1tbsp Worcestershire sauce
1tbsp tomato puree
1 Knorr Beef Stock Pot
500ml water
1 sprig of thyme
1/4 of a pumpkin or butternut squash, peeled, diced
1 large carrot, peeled, diced
Butter, milk and 1 egg yolk, (optional) for the mash

The Potatoes
Bake the potatoes until tender (I did mine in the microwave first, then finished them off in the oven to get a crispy skin) Cut the potatoes in half while still warm, scoop out the baked potato and mash with the butter, milk and egg yolk

Labels: bonfire night, cakes, chocolate, Flora Buttery, Halloween, Knorr, Marco Pierre White, Popcorn, Pumpkin Soup, shepherd's pie

posted by Janice @ 20:38 10 Comments

Chocolate Cocktails, Popcorn, Sauce and Business Cards on my Kitchen Table

On my Kitchen Table is a post to share with you some of the products I've been sent to review over the last month, it's a rather eclectic mix this month so let's get stuck in!

First up are some summery chocolates from Hotel Chocolat.  The Tropical Cocktails are sweet and fresh with a little kick of alcohol.  There are four different 'cocktails' : Peach Bellini, Pina Colado, Hurricane and Caipirnha.  We both really liked the Hurricane with dark Jamaican rum truffle blended with zippy Valencian orange and passion fruit, they were all very tasty but the others were a little sweet for our taste.  I was a pack of Choc Fudge Sundae chocs, little chocolate pots filled with a sticky toffee and fudge sauce with intense praline and a sprinkle of crunchy cereal, absolutely delicious and a nice treat at at reasonable price.

Tropical Cocktails £10.00 for 115g 7/10
Choc Fudge Sundae £3.85 for 75g 9/10


Julian Metcalfe is obsessed with delicious and healthy food. Back in 2009 he was fed up of stodgy snacks that weighed him down and he wanted to create something that was light yet tasty to replace the bog standard crisp. Popcorn was the perfect fit and Metcalfe’s skinny Topcorn was born.  There's a new flavour of Metcalfe's skinny topcorn  it's white cheese and it's really really addictive! There are lots of other cool flavours too, from the simple salted popcorn to spicy and sweet flavoured popcorns. 8/10

75g Metcalfe's Skinny Topcorn - White Cheese £1.00 - £1.49

I remember my Mum had a little bottle of Tabasco Pepper sauce which she would use to add chilli heat to her cooking, fresh chillies were not easily available in my childhood and there was only one kind of Tabasco. Now Tabasco have launched a range of sauces to Transport Your Tastebuds, Louisiana Style



Vistaprint have a range of great products at reasonable prices which transform your photographs into books, calendars, mugs, t-shirts, phone cases.... in fact just about anything that will hold an image!  I was going to make a photo book as I have done previously and found them to be excellent, but I simply ran out of time. As  I needed some new business cards, I used the simple step by step instructions to create these cards featuring a recipe I made last summer.
250 Premium Glossy Business Cards : £26.81 including VAT 9/10

Many thanks to the PRs and companies for the samples to review, I was not paid for these reviews and all opinions are my own. 

Labels: Business Cards, cocktails, dipping, Hotel Chocolat, marinade, Metcalfe's Skinny, Popcorn, sauce, Tabasco, Topcorn, Vistaprint

posted by Janice @ 20:51 15 Comments