*Quick note*

I know it has been a while that we've been writing this blog but I still can't figure Blogger text formating out. I think it has a life of its own, 'cuz in every post the spaces between paragraphs are different. *sigh* So don't mind the loooong gaps. Ana.

*End of Quick note*

So what is the the best thing about Halloween?

Dressing up in the most scariest, wildest, funniest, cutest costumes ever?

Scaring others or receiving a fright fest from scary movies, haunted houses, etc?

Eating tons of candy?

All of the above?

Everybody has a different reason for what makes Halloween so great and even though as adults we (apparently) aren't allowed to collect our own stash of candy, we can find other ways to participate, such as baking our own treats. We turned to the queen of Halloween recipes, Martha Stewart, whose array of creative Halloween recipes from cookies to cocktails got us excited. We baked devil's food and pumpkin cupcakes, which are very fitting for the season, and decorated them into scary spiders and worms. Changes to the recipe are made in italics. Happy baking, and have a very spooky but fun filled Halloween!

Halloween Cupcakes

Spider Cupcakes
Original idea from here

Ingredients

Devil's food cupcakes (See recipe below)

Black sanding sugar (we used chocolate cookie crumbs)

1 bag cinnamon candy (we substituted this with mini red M&M's)

1 bag marshmallows

1 bag black licorice (we substituted this with No Name grape flavoured string candy)

Directions

1. Make Devil's food cupcakes.

2. Ice mini cupcakes with whipping cream (or your favourite icing) and coat with sanding sugar/chocolate cookie crumbs. Use cinnamon candy/mini M&M's for eyes. For legs, attach 8 pieces of black licorice/grape string candy. For fangs, cut out tiny cone shapes from a marshmallow and attach.

*Devil's Food Cupcakes
From here

Ingredients

3/4 cup unsweetened Dutch-process cocoa powder (we used regular cocoa powder)

3/4 cup hot water

3 cups all-purpose flour

1 teaspoon baking soda

1 teaspoon baking powder

1 1/4 teaspoon coarse salt (We used regular table salt)

1 1/2 cups (3 sticks) unsalted butter

2 1/4 cups sugar

4 large eggs, room temperature

1 tablespoon plus 1 teaspoon pure vanilla extract

1 cup sour cream, room temperature

Directions

1. Preheat oven to 350 degrees. Line mini muffin tins with paper liners. Whisk together cocoa and hot water until smooth. In another bowl, whisk together flour, baking soda, baking powder, and salt.

2. Melt butter with sugar in a saucepan over medium-low heat, stirring to combine. Remove from heat, and pour into a mixing bowl. With an electric mixer on medium-low speed, beat until mixture is cooled, 4-5 minutes. Add eggs one at a time, beating until each is incorporated, scraping down sides of bowl as needed. Add vanilla, then cocoa mixture, and beat until combined. Reduce speed to low. Add flour mixture into two batches, alternating with the sour cream, and beating until just combined after each.

3. Divide batter evenly among lined cups, filling each 3/4 full. Bake, rotating thins halfway through, until a cake tester (or a toothpick) inserted in centers come out clean, about 20 minutes. Transfer tins to wire racks to cool 15 minutes, turn out cupcakes onto racks and let cool.

*We don't exactly know how much this recipe yields and it is not specified on the site. See Ann's comment below.

Pumpkin Cupcakes
From here

Makes 18 (We halved the recipe and ended up with 12)

Ingredients

2 cups all-purpose flour

1 teaspoon baking soda

1 teaspoon baking powder

1 teaspoon coarse salt (or table salt)

1 teaspoon ground cinnamon

1 teaspoon ground ginger

1/4 teaspoon freshly grated nutmeg (we omitted this ingredient. Why? We simply didn't have any.)

1/4 teaspoon ground allspice (we omitted this one too, same reason as the nutmeg)

1 cup packed light-brown sugar

1 cup granulated sugar

1 cup (2 sticks unsalted butter, melted and cooled)

4 large eggs, lightly beaten

1 can (15 ounces) pumpkin puree

Halloween themed candy, orange and black jelly beans, sprinkles, etc...

Whipping cream, or your favourite icing. May we suggest the maple cream cheese frosting that we used in our pumpkin cake recipe.

Directions

1. Preheat oven to 350 degrees. Line cupcake pans with paper liners; set aside. In a medium bowl, whisk together flour, baking soda, baking powder, salt, cinnamon, ginger, nutmeg, and allspice; set aside.

2. In a large bowl, whisk together, brown sugar, granulated sugar, butter, and eggs. Add dry ingredients, and whisk until smooth. Whisk in pumpkin puree.

3. Divide batter evenly among liners, filling each about halfway. Bake until tops spring back when touched, and with a toothpick inserted in the center comes out clean, 20-25 minutes, rotating pans once if needed. Transfer to a wire rack; let cool completely.

4. Spread whipping cream/frosting and decorate with desired candies.

Ann's Thoughts

57: Ana and I ended up making fifty-seven cupcakes! There were cupcakes everywhere, on the desk, by the fireplace mantle, on the dinning room table, all over the kitchen, I wouldn't be surprised if there are a few cupcakes hiding in Ana's bedroom. I partly blame this on Martha Stewart. She or whoever published the devil's food cupcake on her site did not record how much cupcakes the batter contained, and it did not occur to us until added 1 1/2 cups of butter, and over 2 cups of sugar which seemed suspiciously a lot. We ended up making what seemed like an endless supply of devil's food cupcakes- it was like we were punked.

The theme for these Halloween cupcakes was bugs which consisted of spiders and worms....so worms aren't really scary at all, but when we saw an image of cupcakes infested with gummy worms it was too cute not to do. Decorating these cupcakes reminded me of doing arts and crafts in elementary school. The only thing is that it's not as easy as Ms. Martha makes it look. The legs for the spiders either fell off, destroyed the cupcake as we kept poking holes in them, or just looked weird. Ana was able to make only one pair of fangs our spiders because it was so time consuming. The worms were easier to make. Ana being the smart cookie that she is, inserted toothpicks inside the gummy worms and gently pushed them into the cupcakes so it looks like they are digging themselves inside the cupcakes.

This week I felt the emphasis was on decorating, however the devil's food cupcakes were literally sinfully delicious! Our pumpkin cupcakes were also really good. We didn't get a chance to decorate them (they were simply too many cupcakes to decorate) but they are the best pumpkin cupcakes I've ever tasted.

Ana's Thoughts

Oh Halloween, I wish you were a tradition in my country, too. Then I could eat...err have all the candies to decorate these cupcakes every year. Please come to my country. I'd appreciate it. Thank you.

Ok, enough with the wishful thinking. haha Making and decorating these cupcakes was really fun! The cupcakes themselves were pretty straightforward - be aware that if you choose to make the full recipe you'll end up with more than 50 cupcakes! We chose two different recipes, a pumpkin and a devil's food cupcake. A devil's food, how appropriate. Haha. We here at OSSD think about every detail. Anyway, they were really tasty, specially the pumpkin. Mmmm

I had so much fun decorating them! I wanna do it again!

The only problem for us this week was the pictures. We usually do all the photo shoots with natural light but this week we had to do it inside the house because it was already dark outside, not to mention cold. So they didn't turn out the way we wanted. =S

Anyway, Happy Halloween!! Eat lots of candy, dress up with a funky costume and make these cupcakes!

See you next week. ;)

Receitas em Português


Devido à preguicite aguda, essa semana não postarei as receitas traduzidas. Se tiver interesse por alguma das receitas (Cupcakes de abóboras ou Cupcakes de Chocolate) é só deixar um comentário abaixo. =)

On October 11, 2010, Canadians will be celebrating Thanksgiving, a day where one is suppose to reflect on what he or she is thankful for, but really it is a day to stuff oneself full of turkey, mashed potatoes, pot roast, glazed ham, and so on. However, Thanksgiving cannot be complete without the iconic pumpkin pie. Thus this week, we've made pumpkin cake. A recipe posted by Jennifer on allrecipes.com (the Canadian version). We've paired this recipe with a maple cream cheese frosting, which can be found on Culinary Concoctions by Peabody. Any changes we've made to the recipe are in italics. Happy baking, and for those celebrating Thanksgiving, have a happy Thanksgiving ya'll!

Pumpkin Cake II

1 1/2 cups vegetable oil (We used 1 cup of unsweetened applesauce, see Ann's comment below)
2 cups white sugar
4 eggs
3 cups all-purpose flour
2 teaspoons baking soda
2 teaspoons baking powder
3 teaspoons ground cinnamon
1 teaspoon salt
2 cups solid pack pumpkin puree
1/2 cup chopped walnuts (we omitted the walnuts)


Directions:

1. Preheat oven to 375 degrees F. Grease and flour a 10 inch tube pan. Sift together flour, baking soda, baking powder, cinnamon, and salt. Set aside.

2. In a large bowl, combine oil (or applesauce) and sugar. Add eggs one at a time and mix well. Add the flour mixture and beat until smooth. Add nuts and pumpkin and blend until smooth. Pour batter into greased 10 inch tube pan.

3. Bake at 375º F (190º C) for 1 hour or until a toothpick inserted into the centre of the cake comes out clean. Cool in pan for 10 minutes, then turn out onto a wire rack and finish cooling. Dust with confectioners sugar before serving. (This is optional, we used maple cream cheese frosting instead, see the recipe below.)

Maple Syrup Cream Cheese Filling*


3 cups powdered sugar
1/2 cup unsalted butter, at room temperature
8 ounces cream cheese, at room temperature
3 tablespoons maple syrup
1 teaspoon vanilla


Directions:

1.In the bowl of an electric mixture fitted with a paddle attachment, beat the butter until smooth with no visible lumps. (You can totally do this with a bowl, wooden spoon, and your arm).

2. Add the cream cheese and beat until combined.

3. Add the powdered sugar, maple syrup, and vanilla, and beat until smooth. Be careful not to over beat the filling, or it will lose structure.

* We halved the recipe because we wanted to spread the frosting on top of the cake but if you want to spread it around the side of the cake then feel free to use the full amount.

Ann's Thoughts

I've made this cake a few times in the past, following the ingredients exactly as posted. However what bothered me was how oily the cake turned out, cause if you've noticed, this recipe calls for a whopping amount of one and a half cups of oil - that's seriously fattening. What's so great about allrecipes.com is that many baking enthusiast not only vote on the recipe, but comment and make suggestions on how to make the recipe better or slightly different. One suggestion that's been made by allrecipes members is to substitute the oil for 1 cup of applesauce. So Ana and I used unsweetened applesauce instead, and the cake turned out really, really good. So good, that my share of the cake is already finished! This pumpkin cake is an awesome addition to any Thanksgiving feast, people will be asking for seconds, trust me.

Ana's Thoughts

I wish we had Thanksgiving in Brazil, too. Then I would have another excuse to bake AND stuff my face with food. As if Christmas' Eve, Christmas Day, New Year's Eve and New Year's feasts weren't enough. hahaha But I guess if we had Thanksgiving it wouldn't be the same because October is Spring in Brazil, so our table would be filled with Spring food not Fall food. Anyway, back to Pumpkin cake. My very first Pumpkin cake. At first, I thought it was okay. Not bad, the cinnamon overpowered the pumpkin but you could still taste a little bit of it, the cake was moist, not oily. The frosting wasn't my favorite, though. Too sweet for my taste.

But the next day, I tried another piece, with the frosting still cold from the fridge, and Oh my...it was so good. The cake was still moist and the cold, sweet and tangy, frosting was the perfect combination. I think some cakes are better the next day and this was the case for the Pumpkin cake, in my opinion. Now I want to taste pumpkin pie, pumpkin cheesecake, pumpkin everything. So I better get started...See you next week! ;)

Receita em Português:


Bolo de Abóboras


1 1/2 xíc. de óleo vegetal*
2 xíc. de açúcar
4 ovos
3 xíc. de farinha
2 col (chá) de fermento em pó
2 col (chá) de bicarbonato de sódio
3 col (chá) de canela em pó
1 col (chá) de sal
2 xíc. de purê de abóboras**
1/2 xíc de nozes, picadas


Pré- aqueça o forno a 190ºC. Unte e enfarinhe uma forma com furo no meio. Peneire a farinha, o fermento, bicarbonato, canela e o sal. Reserve.
Em uma tigela grande, junte o óleo e o açúcar. Acrescente os ovos, um por vez, misturando bem. Acrescente a mistura de farinha e misture bem, até estar bem homogêneo. Adicione as nozes e a abóbora, misturando bem.
Asse por 1 hora ou até que um palito saia limpo quando inserido no centro do bolo. Deixe esfriar por 10 min na forma, desenforme e deixe esfriar por completo. Polvilhe açúcar de confeiteiro antes de servir, ou sirva com cobertura de Maple e cream cheese (receita abaixo).


Cobertura de xarope de bordo e cream cheese***


3 xíc. de açúcar de confeiteiro
1/2 xíc (115g) de manteiga sem sal, em temperatura ambiente
250g de cream cheese, em temperatura ambiente
3 col (sopa) de xarope de bordo (Maple syrup)
1 col (chá) de baunilha


Bata a manteiga até ficar cremosa. Adicione o cream cheese e bata até ficar homogêneo.
Acrescente o açúcar, o xarope e a baunilha e bata até obter um creme. Cuidado para não bater demais ou ela perderá sua estrutura. Leve para gelar por 30 min.


*Nós substituímos o óleo por 1 xíc bem cheia de applesauce, ou purê de maçãs. Se for usar óleo, aconselho somente 1 xíc. para não ficar oleoso.
**Nós usamos abóboras já prontas e enlatadas sem adição de açúcar e sólida (sem líquido). Acredito que se você cozinhar abóbora moranga e depois amassá-la, será a mesma coisa.
***Nós fizemos somente meia receita.