Halloween Party - cupcakes and game ideas!

I planned a halloween party for church last night and have a few ideas and recipes to share with you.
Firstly our impromtu costumes:

 The scrubs we had borrowed from our dentist friend - they are very comfy for lounging round the house in. We googled how to make fake blood and the answer is soy sauce (we only had Lea and Perrins but it seemed to work just as well) and red food colouring. It didn't smell so hot, but it looked very genuine.

I made these cupcakes using toppers I got from ebay. I used the hummingbird chocolate cupcake recipe:

Chocolate cupcakes (recipe from The Hummingbird Bakery)

Ingredients

100g plain flour

20g cocoa powder

140g caster sugar

1 1/2 tsp baking powder

a pinch of salt

40g soft unsalted butter

120ml whole milk

1 egg

1/4 tsp vanilla extract (although I probably used 3/4 tsp - slip of the hand!)

Chocolate frosting

3000g icing sugar, sifted

100g unsalted butter, very soft

30g cocoa powder sifted

45ml whole milk

Method
1) Preheat the oven to 170C/Gas 3. Line a 12 hole muffin tin with paper cases.
2) Put the flour, sugar, cocoa powder, baking powder, salt and butter in a large bowl and beat on a slow speed with an electric hand mixer until well combined and a sandy consistency. This is the messy part as the sugar flew all over the place!

3) Whisk the egg, milk and vanilla extract together in a jug and add half to the dry mixture.

4) Beat slowly to combine and then more quickly to beat out any lumps.
5) Add the remaining liquid mixture and beat slowly to combine. Do not overmix.
6) Transfer (I found semi-pouring/semi-spooning the best way to go as the mixture is quite slack) the mixture into the cake cases until 2/3 full and bake for 20-25 minutes in the preheated oven until they spring back to the touch. A skewer inserted should come out clean.
7) Remove from oven and allow to cool on a wire rack before frosting.

I used the perfect never fails me ever, vanilla frosting:

2 cups icing sugar

1 cup unsalted butter 

2 teaspoons vanilla bean paste 

1 tablespoon milk

(Makes enough to frost 12 cupcakes)

I added a few drops of green food colouring to make it more goolish. I also added a sprinkle of edible, gold glitter.

These babies below were pumpkin with cream cheese frosting. Excuse the pictures I was in a rush and had so much to organise and sort out before the party.

Here are some halloween games if you are planning a little party:

1) Pumpkin bowling was easy to organise and very cheap. We emptied six bottles of cheap lemonade (which we turned into witches brew with a little help from blackcurrant squash) and filled them with a handful of marbles. Then they had to bowl them over using a pumkin, it worked very successfully until one of the lads threw the pumkin too hard and it split and pumpkin guts spilt everywhere!

2) Another popular game around blogworld seems to be pin the heart on the skeleton. I painstakingly cut out each bone and laminated them and then we didn't even play it as there was so much going on and I'd lost the blue tac! The skeleton game pattern in available here.

 3) We also played a game where they had to transfer a bowl full of gummy worms from one side of the hall to the other, using chopsticks. We started it with one at a time but then I said they could do two at a time. This was a good laugh.

Let me know if you had a halloween party or link up your halloween costume ideas!

Happy halloween (for tomorrow!!)

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