Half Term Halloween Cupcakes Baking

Half term has been fab so far. Love having my girls at home with me and just chilling out a little bit. I do still remember the times, not that long ago, when I would actually dread the holidays, and the days all seemed so long and tiring. Times have changed and as the girls get older they do get slightly less demanding... or should I say maybe it's just that there are now some breaks inbetween the demanding times!

Anyhow Monday we had booked in as a baking day at home. Mr C will be running the London marathon for the NAS (National Autistic Society) next year (watch this space for his own personal blog on that and a JustGiving page to go with it...), so as part of his fundraising efforts he is holding a Halloween cake sale tomorrow at work.

There's nothing I like more than a bit of baking, and luckily the girls love it too. Sasha is a dab hand at cracking eggs (seriously, with no shell in bowl, who'd have thought it?!) and Tamsin had her eye on making some Monster cakes she had seen in my new cake book.

I had to prepare the surfaces fully first - 

Now you see it....

.. now you don't!

We started at 9am - no, I wasn't running it like school, they were just up early as normal anyway! In fact, even earlier than normal for Tamsin, with the excitement of a baking day in front of her.... We all donned our pinnies and got stuck in. 
'Let's get cracking!' said Sasha, not really appreciating her own wit:

We started off with a mixed batch of green and orange cupcakes - 24 of those, made by the girls. Have learnt that you must have to use an awful lot of food colouring for them to turn out vibrant - must check for future reference whether the gels I use are actually OK in larger doses!

This was followed by a brief interlude where the cakes went into the oven and I had to clear up (you can't imagine how long that took...). The girls ran off and played nicely both together and separately, popping back into the kitchen periodically to ask when the decorating could begin. That pattern was repeated a lot throughout the day. I made another couple of batches of choccy cakes myself - less mess, or so I thought, until I knocked over a box of icing sugar. Doh.

Cakes all baked by lunchtime, so we moved on to the highlight of the day - the decorating. At this point I'll have to admit I probably got a bit carried away as I had so many ideas for Halloween. Wisely I brought each girl in individually to have a go - Tamsin's monsters took forever (hence only 2 of those!) but were followed swiftly by Sasha's ghosts, Tamsin's mummies, both girls' pumpkins, my witches hats (with a bit of help from Tamsin), and finally the chocolate spiders in droves by all of us.

Tonight I had to finish off decorating the left over cupcakes as they looked all bare and sad.... eyes and gravestones it was then!

Oh what fun we had! Can't wait for Christmas....