Trickle Treat!

Oh it's been a Happy Halloween here today :-)

We spent much of it in the kitchen making very good use of a pumpkin:

 We scooped out all the flesh and carved a funny face on it.

 We rinsed then toasted the seeds in the oven until they were brown. Then while the tin was still hot we plopped a knob of butter onto it, coated the seeds and gobbled them warm.

We made chorizo and pumpkin soup:

and we also made pumpkin cakes.

 It was based on a recipe from this book, which is one of my favourites and while they were baking in the oven we read the stories, poems and songs that are in the chapter on Halloween. The recipe is very simple:

Pumpkin Cake

blend together

2 eggs

3 cups of raw pumpkin

1 tsp vanilla essence

1.5 cups brown sugar (you could use less than this, it was quite sweet)

2 tblsp water

1 tsp each of cinnamon, mixed spice and salt

3 tbsp oil

When this is smooth add in 2 and a bit cups of s/r flour and a tsp of bicarb of soda, half cup of raisins and half cup of mixed seeds and nuts

Mix and plop into cake tins and bake in a medium oven foir about an hour.

When ours cooled we iced it with cream cheese and icing sugar...

For a lover of carrot cake this is a good alternative.
We made 2 cakes, one as a thank you present for friends of ours who very kindly treated us to a trip to the theater yesterday and lunch out.

The other was to take with us when we went out trickle treating (as Benny calls it).

I don't like trick or treating when there is no tricking involved, just asking for treats. IN Scotland we used to do a party piece: a song or a poem or trick. Here I encourage the kids to take a home baked treat to our neighbours when we go. We took pumpkin cake and also baked some pumpkin shapes biscuits (also from a recipe from Family Festivals and Food).

So while all the baking was baking and cooling and not being eaten there was lots of time for drawing:

 Frankenstein

 a mummy

 and also a little crafting:

 The kids made themselves some goodie bags (when it came to be time to go they decided they really weren't big or strong enough and they took baskets instead).
 To try and balance our time between indoors and out we put on our woolies and hats and went out to make witches potions in the garden:

 Do you see that witch there, in the field, collecting herbs and witchy things?

 Benny thought it a good idea to distribute his potion around the garden to help the plants grown next year. So if we have a bumper crop you'll know why!

 Finally it was time to go out...

my dear little witch, pumpkin and cat!

Happy Halloween :-)