Oozing Brain Cupcakes Recipe for Halloween

These cupcakes are easy to make and look effective with the oozing Cottage Delight Strawberry Extra Jam centre and brain effect icing!

Ingredients

For the cakes:

140g softened butter

3 medium eggs

140g golden caster sugar

100g self-raising flour

For the filling

6tbsp 340g Jar of Cottage Delight Strawberry Extra Jam

For the icing:

600g icing sugar, sifted

6 tbsp. water

1 tsp. pink food colouring

Method

Heat the oven to 190C/fan 170C/gas 5.

Arrange paper cases in the cake tin.

Add all the cake ingredients into a large bowl and beat with an electric whisk for about 3 minutes until you get a smooth batter.

Divide the mixture between each cake case.

Bake for 12-15 minutes until risen and golden.

Remove from the oven and allow to cool on a wire rack.

Cut out a small hole in the top of each cake and fill with 1 tsp. of Cottage Delight Strawberry Extra Jam.

Mix the icing sugar, 1 tsp. of pink food colouring and water, until stiff, to the mix. Place the icing mixture into a piping bag and decorate the cupcakes with a squiggly pattern to look like brains.

Leave to set.

These will keep for up to 2-3 days stored in a cool place, in an airtight container. 

Find more seasonal recipes like this one and buy the Strawberry Extra Jam (£3.45 for 340g jar) at www.cottagedelight.co.uk. (I received a jar to try out this recipe.)

Halloween at Aldi

It's that time of year again, when the shops stock up with all their Halloween goodies.  If you want quality and value, Aldi offers a great range of Halloween themed Special Buys available in store.

They sent me the Dr Oetker Halloween cupcake kit to try.  For just £1.59 you can make 12 monstrously good cupcakes (just add some butter and eggs).  I will be making these with the kids for our celebrations!

I also received a pack of window stickers which are available for just £1.59 a pack.  With sixteen designs to choose from you will find a pack that is perfect for your house!  They are 42 x 30cm and will look super spooky!

Aldi also stock a great range of dressing up sets and accessories, tableware, decorations, partyware, food, drink and bakeware for Halloween.  Find them in your local Aldi while stocks last.

Halloween Fun!

I have always had a fascination with the macabre, the grotesque and the horrific!  I love my horror films, books and memorabilia.  I am a firm believer in the possibility of a future Zombie Apocalypse and I have my plan for survival all worked out! Halloween is my time!!

I adore the outfits available at this time of year.  Dressing up is such fun, especially when you get to dress up your little darlings as Halloween creatures of the night!  Thinking back to when my eldest were younger we had to get creative.  The vast array of fabulous outfits we see in the shops today, simply did not exist. In 1996 we had a Halloween party and made the costumes using bin bags.  The children had a lot of fun becoming witches and zombies!  The resulting outfits were quite impressive when teamed with a few props and some face paint!



Sometimes I think we miss out a bit these days having it so easy...but then,  I go to Tesco and see the huge array of fantastic costumes in sizes from the teeniest baby to an XL adult, and I succumb to the delights of this commercial time in which we live!!  Choosing an outfit for Fred was tricky!  It needed to be practical enough to accommodate his toddling, warm enough to stop him from getting cold (and needing a cardi which would totally ruin the look) and fabulous enough that he would look cool! There were spiders, pumpkins, monsters, witches and mummies...but I chose a vampire outfit!  Not your modern day Twilight style vampire...oh no!  This was a proper Hammer House of Horrors, Christopher Lee, Count Dracula number complete with cloak.  Exactly how vampires should be!!   So with a touch of Daddy's hair gel to slick back the hair...our little Count Fredula was complete!

My 14 year old went for a beautiful corpse look and looked stunning in her black prom dress and fascinator.  My 8 year old loved her purple witch's outfit! 

My husband donned a rather scary werewolf mask and I went down the witchy route and the Horror Family were ready to party!!



Thanks to QWERTY MUM for a great party...excellent veggie chilli, veggie pizza and amazing Halloween cupcakes.  Gotta love Halloween!!