Halloween Ideas

Happy Halloween!! I hope you're all getting the pumpkins ready to carve, and the sweets stocked up for the Trick or Treaters. Halloween actually dates back around 2000 years, where it was known as All Hallow's Eve. Then, it was a serious holiday where the dead were honoured. Now, Halloween seems to me to be getting more and more fun each year! Whether you enjoy the day for the scary movies, dressing up yourself and/or your children (or pets!), it's a day to be enjoyed. 

Why not bake something this Halloween to spook/thrill you ;) I found so many brilliant recipes on twitter - here are just a few of the ones I've found.

Try them and let me know how they are. 

Have a Halloween-inspired bake I haven't mentioned? Please let me know, and I'll add it to this post :D

Spooky Spider Cakes

This is a superb halloween-themed cupcake, my favourite so far! The spiders are adorable (creepy in their own way), and look so effective. This is a blog I do love, so I would highly recommend trying this out. I even had another idea based on this for making the spider legs - if they work in my experiments, they'll be posted shortly.

DIY Halloween Cake Pops
These bite-size pumpkin cakes are super cute, and are just about big enough to fit a whole one in your mouth!! This is a super simple recipe for the beginners out there.

Halloween spider web cookies

Here is a really simple but effective way to decorate your cookies. You  could even buy store-bought biscuits if you're short of time but I'd recommend using a recipe like my ginger biscuits.

Halloween Cookies
Want something cute/creepy? Try these biscuit men decorated in a very creepy way!











Scary Treats

Here are some recipes for grandma's ginger buns/biscuits. Simple decorations like these are simple to buy and are good time-savers.

Halloween Cupcakes
Here's a great recipe for cupcakes, both chocolate and spiced varieties. I love the idea of the strong cinnamon, nutmeg and ginger warming flavours. These have been simply decorated, but they look like they would taste fabulous. Plus those carved pumpkins are amazing!

Creepy Coffin Cookies
Here is another cool way to decorate your biscuits. The coffin in these really stands out, and the skeletons are very fun. Plus it'd be a test of your piping skills :D

Sticky Parkin

This is not as such a halloween recipe, but a very autumnal one. I adore parkin - a treacly dense cake, which improves with age. This recipe comes from my home county, so I may be a little biased, but I reckon it must be brilliant.

Global Baking Blogs/Recipes

Baking is a hobby/necessity all around the globe, and I find the similarities and differences between dishes in different countries fascinating. 
I've been speaking to baking bloggers and reading many international blogs, and have found fantastic national/regional recipes! 
Here are links to a few of my favourites.

USA

This blog not only contains hundreds of sweet recipes, but the writer (Jessie) also posts cool sweet-themed art projects :) Her blog is really cool, so you should check it out.
This recipe is for the classic american buttercream frosting: http://www.cakespy.com/blog/2013/3/24/cakespys-favorite-buttercream-frosting.html - very simple but delicious!

Here's a recipe for the american classic: Pecan Pie. http://www.gimmesomeoven.com/best-pecan-pie-recipe/

Poland

My boyfriend is polish, so recently I've been reading a lot about polish baking. The recipes tend to be simple but full of flavour. They're also not, in general, well known about, so one of my missions is to make the dishes as popular as they deserve to be!

This blog is great for polish recipes, and at the moment has one sweet recipe for blueberry pierogi. Pierogi are a style of dumpling, normally filled with savoury fillings such as cheese and onion. This is a sweet variant that I really want to try to make.
http://mypolishkitchen.co.uk/recipes/polish-sweet/recipe-blueberry-pierogi/

This blog is written by a pastry chef called Natasha. Her family is polish meaning that she has written some family-classics on her blog. This one stood out for me - Karpatka (vanilla slice).
http://www.butterbaking.com/2012/06/19/polish-vanilla-slice-karpatka/

Croatia

I recently spent some time in Croatia, and as well as doing boring science-stuff, ate lots and lots of their baked goods.

This blog has many recipes to the baked goods I tasted there. One that was in every shop window were their doughnuts.

http://honestcooking.com/cooking-croatia-croatian-jelly-doughnuts/

France

France is famous for it's patisserie, and it's where I almost went to actually train to become a pastry chef! They are the masters of beautiful chocolates and desserts.

Fanny is from France (now living in Sweden) and a professional pastry chef. If I can ever bake things as beautifully as she does, I'll be very happy.
Here is a recipe for the ultimate chocolate dessert - chocolate fondant.

http://www.likeastrawberrymilk.com/2011/09/mind-your-french-le-fondant-au-chocolat/

Australia

This writer of this blog (Karen) writes the kind of recipes I love! Nothing that is apparently 'sugar-free', but purely delicous recipes that can be eaten in moderation (if you want to eat healthy) or be devoured if you want a treat. She has a huge variety of baking recipes on her blog, all of which are very well written and easy to follow.

Here she writes a recipe for the classic australian biscuit - known as Anzac biscuits

http://www.citrusandcandy.com/2009/04/a-sweet-tribute-any-day-of-the-year.html

Japan

Nami has written loads of recipes, both sweet and savoury, of which there are over 450!! I wasn't really aware of any japanese desserts until I read this blog. This recipe is for dorayaki - a sort of red-bean filled pancake sandwich. 

http://www.justonecookbook.com/dorayaki-japanese-red-bean-pancake/

UK

Being from the UK myself, I love our desserts and adore baking our classics. There are loads of other UK bloggers who give me inspiration.

Martha appeared on the last series of the best show on TV. The Great British Bake Off. She's only 17 but I've already successfully tried out several of her recipes. Here is one of her family favourites - cornish fairing biscuits.

http://bakingmartha.co.uk/gallery/cornish-fairing-biscuits/

Kate is a welsh baking blogger, who writes lots of interesting recipes. Here is a recipe for her classic carrot and walnut cake.

http://www.whatkatebaked.com/2015/05/a-classic-carrot-and-walnut-cake.html





Hope you find these recipes and blogs as great I think they are. If you have a classic recipe from your home country and want to share it, comment or send me an email - honeycombcrunchies@gmail.com :)