Pinoy Hubby

Halloween is definitely more fun if you have kids - or if you are in your 20s and want an excuse to dress in a sexy costume! This year I'm not doing anything for Halloween - I was going to carve a pumpkin but it's 5pm on October 31 and I haven't been to the supermarket yet!   I suddenly remembered a cake pop mould I bought in the Selfridges January sale and had put in a cupboard; I also had some offcuts of another cake in the freezer so I decided to make cake pops. This mould is made of silicon and is designed so you can actually bake your cake mixture into the appropriate shapes, but I found you can also use it as a mould. I mixed the crumbled cake with some buttercream until I had a dough-like consistency - I've written several posts before on how to make cake pops so won't explain in detail again. I then pressed the mixture into the silicon mould, put both sides of the mould together and put it in the fridge for an hour to set. The shapes came out of the mould v...

Gingerbread houses are really cute, aren’t they – and actually a bit tricky to make, as it turns out!   For a few years now I’ve wondered about asking for a set of gingerbread house cutters for Christmas but then thought there was no point, as it’s something that people really make in the run-up to Christmas, not after. A few weeks ago my fiancé mentioned something about gingerbread and I explained why I’d never asked for one as a gift for the reason I’ve just explained, and we left it at that. Two days later a parcel from Lakeland turned up containing a gingerbread house kit! That was very sweet of him – one of the many reasons I’m marrying him J   He also had a great suggestion – that rather than just using the kit before Christmas, I make a haunted gingerbread house for Halloween. Of course, that way he gets more gingerbread, but I’m not complaining!   The Lakeland kit comes with instructions for making the gingerbread itself which was very easy to do. I was worried t...

It was announced at work yesterday that we were going to have a bake sale - today. A bit short notice for my liking but I really wanted to make something! I didn't have time to buy any extra ingredients so had to make do with what I had at home (and one thing I picked up in M&S at the train station) - but this is me after all. I had plenty of stuff at home!   I decided cupcakes would be quickest and easiest and I could decorate them with different Halloween toppers. I was originally going to make chocolate cakes but decided to use a flavour combination that you get a lot at this time of year: toffee apple. I decided to go with a basic recipe and then add my flavourings and see how it turned out; the result was a light, bouncy cake with both flavours definitely coming through. Toffee Apple Cupcakes - an original recipe by Caroline Makes 175g butter 175g caster sugar 3 eggs 175g apple sauce 175g Carnation caramel 175g self-raising flour to decorate: 400g icing sugar 2 egg whites ...