Halloween Cake Pops

With Halloween in a couple of days I wanted to create some easy but delicious treats that one could serve at a party or just for fun.

The basic recipe is for caramel cake pops then decorated into pumpkins, you could also design them to be eyeballs, ghosts or other such like depending on what you have.I have always associated caramel with autumn as it is such a warming flavor.

Ingredients: (for 20 cake pops)
60g caster sugar
60g butter
1 egg
60g self raising flour
1 tsp caramel flavoring (just for ease)

Preheat the oven to 180 degrees fan.

Cream the butter and sugar together.

Mix in a bit of the egg, then a bit of flour, then a bit of, then a bit of flour until all the egg is gone and there is half of the flour remaining.

Add the flavoring and mix.

Fold in the remainder of the flour, get as much air as possible in to the mixture.

Grease your cake pop tin and fill the bottom half of the mold with cake mix.

Put the lid on the cake pop tin and bake for 10 minutes so that they fill the tin.

Then leave to cool.

For decoration:
4 tablespoons Icing Sugar
1 tablespoon water
Orange gel coloring- to effect
Orange sugar crystals
Mixed peel
Green food coloring

Mix the water, sugar and coloring together so that it is thick paste. Pour over the cake pops and then cover in the sugar crystals.

For the stalk I used a piece of mixed peel which I painted green with food coloring. 

Happy Baking and Happy Halloween!

Gx

Back to School Series: Granola Bites

Now coming back to school means that I tend to eat more biscuits... if that is even possible. And trying to come across healthy biscuit/cereal bars is very difficult. HOWEVER, in Tesco they sell these things called "Seedy, Crispy, Nutty Bites" or something along those lines.

But they are ridiculously expensive for something so small and cheap to produce, thus I had to recreate them with my own little twist.

Ingredients:
100g raisins/sultanas
120g rolled oats
40g brown sugar
150g chopped mixed nuts
25g sunflower seeds
1 tbsp poppy seeds
20g desiccated coconut
115g butter
60g honey
60g golden syrup

Method:
1. Preheat the oven to 180 degrees Celsius
2. Heat the syrup, honey, sugar and butter in a pan

3. Mix all the dry ingredients in a bowl and pour the melted mixture in to the bowl and combine. If the mixture doesn't look dense enough add a tbsp more oats.

4. Shape the mixture into small balls and place on a greased tray.

5. Bake for around 8 minutes and leave to cool.
6. Allow to cool and then remove from tray.

Now, I would have a beautiful array of pictures of the end product but unfortunately there were some technical difficulties...

Anyway, although these aren't the most healthy snacks in the world, they are better for you than chocolate chip cookies so to me they are the epitome of health.

Until next time,

Gracie x

Back to School Series - New year round 2?

We are coming into a new school year, my final school year - weep, and this is the time for change and self-improvement. The second chance for all of us who have clearly failed our New Years resolutions. Remember those from January? Yeah thought not...

 Back in January I was going to run more, drink more water and be super organised with work and go to bed earlier each night. Guess how long that lasted? Approximately until the evening of January 1st when it reached midnight and I was still watching YouTube videos rather than sleeping.

For round two I am going to set myself the challenge with a deadline of sorts and a step I have taken to achieve it. I am hoping that this is a bit more effective than the random declaration "I WILL EAT MORE FRUIT" which poses the question- but how?

So let's go. New Years resolutions round 2:

Run more

I have new trainers which fit so I am hoping that this will act as a form of encouragement... Hopefully... 

By the 1st November I will have run 24 times.<- gaaaah scary 

Be in bed at 10 every single school night

I have set a timer so that my phone, iPod and laptop will turn off at 10 so that I will only be able to read and will be forced to avoid screens!

Stay organised

Normally at this point in the academic year I decide that I will do every piece of work when it is set and that will be that. This never lasts and so I have gone for a more open option which I hope will be helpful.

Blog more

I don't use this enough. This is mainly down to the fact that there is not enough time in the world to do both bake and blog. But to remedy this I am going to do a few more posts and this is the start of my back to school series over this week and next. So stay tuned for that.

Anyway- if you are going back to school, good luck you will be awesome and if it doesn't go as planned- just eat cake.

Grace x