Halloween Treats and Death by Chocolate

As I mentioned in my last post, I made some Halloween treats last weekend, starting with white and dark chocolate covered Halloween pretzel rods.




These are so easy to make and they look so pretty. My favourite treats to make are the low-effort/high-impact kind. I melted the chocolate in the microwave in a bowl, and then I spooned the chocolate in the bowl over the pretzel rods while allowing the extra chocolate to drip off into the same bowl. Then I decorated the chocolate covered pretzels with a couple different types of Halloween coloured sprinkles. I plan on making a bunch of these for Christmas but they’ll have Christmas coloured sprinkles.

I also made some mint chocolate Nanaimo bars. Here is a picture of the pan before I cut them into squares.


The pattern in the chocolate topping  was created by adding the top melted chocolate layer of the nanaimo bar recipe and then piping alternating stripes of melted white chocolate, and melted green and orange molding wafers on top while the chocolate layer was still warm. Finally, I used the tip of a toothpick to draw lines from one side of the pan to the other, up and down, through the chocolate stripes before putting the bars in the fridge to harden.

And this is what the Nanaimo bars look like cut into squares alongside some of my other treats.


The recipe that I used for the Nanaimo Bars was adapted from a chocolate orange Nanaimo bar recipe, which I intend to try on an other occasion. The bars didn’t turn out quite right—the recipe for both the chocolate top and the filling were off—and so they look a little scrappy with their broken tops, rough edges and filling oozing out.

I need to find another Nanaimo bar recipe with slightly different proportions of ingredients in order to make the top layer and the filling the right consistencies, but the cookie crumb base of this recipe was absolutely perfect. I find that Nanaimo bars tend to have really dry bases but this one was dense enough to stand up to the filling but still a bit chewy, and toasting the walnuts beforehand really allowed their flavour to be distinct and to come through the rest of the crumb base. But even though the Nanaimo bars I made are a bit scrappy and sloppy looking in these photos, they were really delicious nonetheless. They were the kind of cookies that you can’t stop at just one or two. Good thing I brought them in to work for my coworkers.

I also made dark and white chocolate witch fingers, pretzel witch fingers, and chocolate pumpkins with peanuts. These were made with the help of two Wilton Halloween candy molds.


I still haven’t perfected using those Wilton candy molds, hence the air bubbles and the chocolate that looks as if it is overflowing the mold indentations around the finger nails. The witch finger mold is intended for pretzel rods but you can just fill the finger part of the mold with chocolate and omit the pretzel. The pumpkin mold is intended for lollipops, but I just filled the pumpkin cavity and didn’t insert a lollipop stick.

My next project is to make a cake and cupcakes to bring in to the office to celebrate the birthday of my coworker and I--our birthdays are one day apart in late November. Then I’ll be making a birthday cake for myself to enjoy at home, a Christmas cake and cupcakes for our office holiday party, and a Christmas cake for my favourite meal of the year, our family Christmas Eve supper.

Looks like I’m going to be busy! But being busy is good. It helps keep me out of trouble. Athough I don't imagine that there's much trouble I could get into given my relatively tame interests and hobbies, unless that trouble is some sort of cake or chocolate-covered confection related crime. Death by chocolate, perhaps?

The Beginning of Fall

I want to start this post by mentioning how busy I've been over the past six weeks and make reference to how fast time goes, but that's how I always start my posts and it's getting a little tired.

So, I'll just say "hello" and jump right into it.

I made another Halloween Tree a few weeks ago using a black decorative tree that I bought on sale after Halloween at Michael’s last year. The branches are made from covered wire that can be bent and arranged in different directions. I wanted this tree to be distinct from the one that I made back in 2007, which you can see by clicking here. That first tree has skull, pumpkin, and bat ornaments, and a trio of witches and their black cat gathered around a tombstone at the base.


For this new Halloween tree I made crows (one is hanging as an ornament and another is sitting on a blackened pumpkin at the base of the tree), pumpkins, apples, ghosts and an owl from Sculpey brand polymer clay. Unfortunately, I didn’t read the Sculpey baking instructions prior to putting the first batch of ornaments in the oven and they ended up burning a bit, hence the blackened pumpkin that the crow is sitting on at the base of the tree. The bottoms of the apples are slightly scorched, as are the bottoms of the ghosts, which makes it look as if they were floating low over muddy ground before finally floating up to settle in their haunting spots in the tree.

In the photo above you can see one of the blackened pumpkins that was burned in the oven. I made other pumpkins but they were so charred that I had to throw those out. I was much more careful with the second batch of pumpkins, as you can see!

Has it really been 4 years since I made that first tree? It seems like only yesterday. Maybe that’s why I felt so confident in relying only on my memory for baking my Sculpey for this new tree rather than actually looking up the directions. Lesson learned. Both of my Halloween Trees are now on display in my living room along with my other spooky seasonal decorations.

Anyway, you may have noticed that the quality of the photos of my new Halloween Tree are much better than my first tree. Finally, 7 long years after buying my first digital camera, a simple little Olympus point-and-shoot thing, I now have a new camera. It’s a Canon EOS REBEL T3 digital SLR and, boy, does it take some beautiful pictures. My new Canon can also make high definition videos which opens up a whole new world of possibilities. I bought a tripod, too, because I am terrible for moving the camera when I take a snap, and I have plans to make some short stop-motion animation films so I’ll need my hands free to move things around.

But rather than get way, way, way ahead of myself, which is what I always do when I have a new toy and a never-ending supply of creative ideas and plans (I love planning!), a few weeks ago on September 18th I started out with my Canon by taking a few sunny morning shots of flowers out in the garden.






There are so many interesting little details in these flowers. I love that the resolution of the original photos is so high that when I zoom in while viewing them on my computer, I can see the specks of pollen on the flower petals.


These flowers look like they ran to hide when I started clomping around the garden in my rubber boots and were too scared to come out from under the chair to have their picture taken. Either that or they’re napping in the shade.

And then there’s the fruit. The tomatoes were almost ready to be picked when I took these.




The black currants, on the other hand, were not fit to be picked at all.


These are some sad looking black currants. A nice snack for the birds, perhaps.

And finally, a lonely gooseberry. I was only able to find three on the whole bush.


The weather was awful this summer in St. John’s which is why nothing really grew or ripened normally. I’m already planning for next year, though. I want to grow some of my favourite vegetables, namely pumpkins, butternut squash, zucchini, carrots (the regular orange kind but also purple and yellow), beets, and garlic. And more tomatoes, of course.

I picked the ripest tomatoes and used about 14 or so of the smallest ones on September 24th to make a roasted red and green tomato and red pepper soup.


It was so, so, so good. I only made enough for two small bowls but it was worth it. I picked the remaining tomatoes this week and gave them to my father who used them to make green tomato sandwich spread.

I’ve made so many baked things over the past couple of months that I’m having trouble remembering everything, but I know for sure that I made the following:

• Mini apple raisin cinnamon rolls;
• Chocolate brownies with walnuts;
• Chocolate and pumpkin-walnut marbled brownies with chocolate drizzle on top. These were made with leftover pumpkin puree from Halloween 2010 that was found in the deep freeze but they were ridiculously good nonetheless;
• Oat and apple muffins;
• Blueberry and currant bran muffins;
• A small cherry, blueberry, and apple cake;
• Banana chocolate chip muffins;
• And mini banana bread loaves. 

Unfortunately, I didn’t take pictures of any of these, despite having a new camera. I’m going to make some Halloween themed chocolates and chocolate-covered pretzels this weekend to bring in to my coworkers, like most of the things I make. I want to try making my own pretzels at some point, too. I'll try to remember the photos this time.

If I was kept in a darkened room with no windows and no access to the outside world, I swear I'd know that autumn was on its way simply by the insatiable baking itch that always comes over me this time of year. But if I did look outside, I'd instantly know the time of year because when else do the garden gnomes and other assorted decorative wee folk come together? Here’s a photo of my garden denizens' annual fall council meeting which they are holding before they make their way into the shed for the winter.


Notice how the Disney Seven Dwarves are off to one side keeping to themselves. But you can't really expect such icons of the silver screen to hobnob with the regular wee folk, can you?

Like cakes through the hourglass, so are the days of my life

I know that as you get older it's supposed to feel as if time is speeding up, but I can hardly believe that it's been over a month since I last posted here. This morning I spent about 15 minutes before I got out of bed just lying there groggily trying to figure out what day it was and if I was late for work even though it's Sunday. All the days seem to blend together, the passing of time marked only by the styles of the cakes that I make and plan to make.

In late June, I made a 6-inch birthday cake for my mom. It was a mixed berry cake with orange cream icing/filling and fondant decorations.







Last weekend, I made a 6-inch cake and mini cupcakes for my coworkers. They were chocolate cake with vanilla buttercream icing, and I used a couple different types of sprinkles, violet coloured sugar, and silver dragees for decoration. The lighting was poor when I took the following pictures, but you get the idea.











By the way, despite what the My Little Pony-esque colours and the precious wee cakes might suggest, my coworkers are not six-year-old girls. That didn't stop them from wolfing it all down, though.

I’m going to try to make a cake a month just to keep my icing and decorating skills fresh. You start to forget things after a while, which I discovered when I tried to make buttercream icing last weekend for the above cake and nearly messed up the order of the recipe. I picked up Wilton’s 2012 Yearbook yesterday at Bulk Barn and it’s given me some great inspiration for future cakes. Some of the cakes in the Yearbook look so fancy, fussy and time consuming that I'll have to modify and simplify things consideribly if I'm going to try and replicate any of them. My mother saw the Yearbook and told me that she wants the candy and ice cream themed cake on the cover for her next birthday but that's way out of my skill level at the moment. Good thing I have 11 months to practice.

I can’t believe August will be here tomorrow.  Late August to December is my favourite time of year, mainly because the anticipation of Halloween and Christmas--not to mention my birthday in late November--seem to infuse everything in life during those months with a bit of extra excitement. I woke up this morning and made a list of things I need to get to make Halloween cupcakes and cookies, and I picked out some Halloween cookie cutters to buy online (they're cheaper than in-store). I have a lot of my Christmas gift shopping done (yes, really), and I just ordered some different styles of How the Grinch Stole Christmas themed cotton fabric (this, this, and this) to make a Christmas tree skirt.  I need to get back to working on my Christmas decorations, too. My desk in my office/craft room is covered with little bird shaped pieces of felt that need to be decorated with tiny beads and assembled to make tree ornaments.

Finally, although this isn't making or baking related, my living room was repainted, as you can see from the painting-in-progress photo below that was taken on Friday.


I just wanted to document the big change from red to green! As much as I love my new Grinch-coloured living room, I miss the vibrant cherry red. After the tape was peeled off, I went around with a smaller brush and tried to cover up the bits of red still peeping through under the green around the baseboards and doorframes. Everywhere I looked there were hints of red, and just when I thought I’d covered over the last patch of red, I’d spot another one. You'd never know from looking at my living room now that it used to be painted red thanks to my obsessive touch-upping, which I can only liken to trying to find and clean away every last incriminating drop of blood at a crime scene. Not that I have any experience with that sort of thing. I'm just saying.