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 very easily - there was a skull, a ghost, a pumpkin and a ball that you can decorate as an eyeball. I stuck the end of some cake pop sticks into some melted candy melts and put them into the cake balls and left them to set.
Unfortunately I hadn't left them quite long enough (or my dough was too soft - you can always pop them in the freezer if you are worried) because the pumpkins and eyeballs fell apart when I was dipping them into the candy melts (I was only making one or two of each as they were only for my fiancé and I - I don't get trick or treaters where I live!).
However, the skulls and ghost turned out really well and you can still see the detail of the shapes, eg the hollows of the skulls eyes.
I dipped them in melted white candy melts and left them to set, then used a brush and a little black food colouring to paint on the details.
For the final touch I stood them in these mini pumpkins, called 'munchkins' - I had to make a hole with a skewer first, then pushed the cake pop sticks in.
Last year I made ghost and Frankenstein cake pops, which you can see here.
The Food Year Linkup on Charlotte's Lively Kitchen is still open so I am sending her these Halloween cake pops.
I've also just got time to share this with Treat Petite hosted by Stuart at Cakeyboi and Kat at the Baking Explorer, as their theme is black and orange.
