Halloween Bark

Ingredients:

12-14 orange and black sandwich cookies, broken up into large chunks
1 cup pretzels, broken into pieces
1 pound almond bark or white chocolate melts
1 1/2 cups candy corn
20-30 candy eyeballs
1-2 tablespoons of a variety of Halloween food sprinkles.

Directions:

1.  Melt almond bark according to package. I slowly melted mine in a sauce pan over a low heat, until smooth and shiny. Make sure to stir frequently to prevent burning.

2. In the meantime, cover a large cookie sheet with wax paper or parchment paper.  Spread broken cookies, pretzels and about 1 cup of the candy corn onto the prepared cookie sheet.

3. Drizzle the melted chocolate over the cookie mixture, spreading with spatula to coat evenly.

4. Quickly sprinkle remaining candy corn, candy eyeballs and food sprinkles over the almond bark while it is still wet.  Place cookie tray into refrigerator until set and firm.

Break into small pieces and eat!

Super easy and so yummy!

Sweet and Salty

Baking, Boots, Pumpkins and Costumes!

I just love Fall.  I love everything about it.  

Cooler temperatures, colorful leaves, wearing boots and scarves, baking, carving pumpkins, trick or treating....I could go on and on.

I wanted to throw in this blog post just to show you some highlights from our October.

What a fun month!

Halloween baking fun with friends

Ashlan and I LOVE wearing boots!

Painting pumpkins 

(much easier and cleaner than carving)

Heading to Fall Festivals

Silliness at School Fall Festivals

My wildcat ready to trick or treat

Ready to trick or treat

Halloween fun with her sweet friend

October/Halloween 2013 was a success!

I love this time of year!

#52 - Candy Corn

The 52 Bundt Cakes in a Year challenge is complete!

I can not believe I made a different bundt cake each week for an entire year.....

I am not tired of baking the bundts, but I am tired of EATING them!!  No joke!

So what was my final bundt cake?

It just happened to be my favorite candy in the world....

Candy Corn!

Shopping List

1 box of white cake mix

2 small boxes of instant vanilla pudding

1/2 cup of veggie oil

1 1/4 cups water

4 eggs

1 can vanilla frosting

3 teaspoons almond extract, divided

Orange food coloring

Yellow food coloring

Candy Corn to garnish

Preheat oven to 350 degrees

Grease (I use Pam) a 10 inch bundt pan

In mixing bowl, combine cake mix, puddings, oil, water and eggs with electric mixer.  Stir in 2 teaspoons of almond extract.  Divide the batter between two bowls. In one bowl, add 7-8 drops of orange food coloring and stir. In the second bowl, add 7-8 drops of yellow food coloring and stir. Pour the orange cake batter in the prepared bundt pan first. Spread out evenly over bottom of pan. Next, pour the yellow batter over the orange and carefully spread it on top.  Bake 40-45 minutes or until toothpick inserted comes out clean.

Let cake rest on counter in pan 10 minutes. Then, invert the cake onto a serving plate to finish cooling.

 

To make the frosting, add one teaspoon of almond extract into your vanilla frosting and stir.  Spread over cooled cake and top with Candy Corn.

_____________________________________________________

What a fun year this was in the kitchen!  

Within the next week, I will post a blog of my top 5 bundt cakes I baked.

But I'm not finished sharing my kitchen endeavors with you yet....

Stay tuned for the Fall Soup Challenge (one soup a week during the season of Fall)

That challenge begins THIS WEEK!!!

Welcome, Fall!

Trick-or-Treat

Happy Halloween!

This year Ashlan chose to be a USA Olympic Gymnast, sporting a gold medal!

(she will be wearing black work out pants over her leotard when trick or treating!)

Wishing everyone a fabulous Halloween!!

#10 - Halloween Fun Bundt Cake

It's the week of Halloween!

This week's bundt cake just HAD to be Halloween themed...

I found a fun recipe online for this Halloween Fun Bundt Cake

Orange, Purple and Black

To view this recipe, click here

Frankenstein Rice Krispie Treats

Ashlan and I had some fun after school yesterday making these Frankenstein Treats!

A fun and easy treat to make!

First, make your normal batch of rice krispie treats.  The only different thing you need to do is add green food coloring to the marshmallows as they melt.  Once they have set in your pan, cut them into rectangular shapes.

Using some small pretzel sticks, add a small marshmallow on one end of each stick (for the arms)

Melt some chocolate.  Dip one end of the treat into the chocolate to resemble Frankstein's hair.

Add your pretzel arms.  I used some left-over chocolate chips for the eyes and used gels for the nose and mouth.

A fun, easy AND delicious treat!!

Happy Halloween!

#9 Candy Corn Bundt Cake

The girls and I thought it would be fun to pull out our Candy Corn Aprons and bake up some Candy Corn Cake for this week's bundt cake!

As you can see from the pictures below, this was a fun cake to bake.  

Kate made the orange batter..

Ashlan made the yellow batter

In the end, we had a fun, colorful Candy Corn Bundt Cake.

For the recipe, click here.

Candy Jars

Took a break from baking and got back into my crafty mode today

Made some candy jars  - Jack-o-lantern and a Ghost

The pumpkin is filled with orange jelly beans

The ghost is filled with white M&M's

Then I attached a little tag

EEK

and BOO

Frankenstein - Apple Style

Check out the weekend forecast for us!  We have a cool front coming through!  Dropping from a high of 104 to a high of 86....   I really hope, after today, we have seen the last of the triple digit temperatures!  

5-Day Forecast

Friday

104°/70°

Clear

Precip: 10%

Saturday

86°/61°

Partly Cloudy

Precip: 10%

Sunday

90°/61°

Clear

Precip: 0%

Monday

93°/64°

Partly Cloudy

Precip: 0%

Tuesday

93°/68°

Clear

Precip: 0%

With that being said, bring on the FALL decorations and treats!  

Let's start with the traditional caramel apple.  Personally, I'd rather buy a caramel apple then make it myself.  Such a mess, in my opinion!

But I found this cute Frankenstein idea.  Yes, it's a caramel apple, only it doesn't seem as messy as dipping the entire apple in sticky caramel.  Instead, just dip the top of the apple in caramel, then roll it around in mini Chocolate Chips...  Use some icing gels to make the mouth and scar and white chocolate chips for the eyes!  Brilliant!

Pumpkin Rice Krispie Treats

Who doesn't like a rice krispie treat every now and then, especially kids? They are easy to make and you can shape/color them any way you want! Since Fall has arrived, how about some pumpkin krispie treats?

Get your bag of marshmallows and box of rice krispie cereal, along with butter. Make the treats just like you would any other time... But before you mix the marshmallow with the cereal, add some yellow and red food coloring to the melted marshmallow to make it an orange tint. Mix it with the cereal. Once it cools a bit, form the krispies into a ball. (the size of the ball fits into the palm of my hand)

Add a tootsie roll as the stem. Then form a leaf and vine using Laffy Taffy (green)

Then package them in a clear bag with a note wishing your friends/neighbors a Happy Fall!

Halloween 2010

Halloween was a BUSY day for us! We decided to make our first ever trek out to Fort Worth for the Air Show! Can I just say, AWESOME! I remember seeing the Air Show's when I was a child, but I hadn't been in YEARS and Brent and the kids had never been. So we decided to make a day of it at the Air Show. I WISH I had pictures to share with you. We left the camera in the car and never made the long trek back to the car to get the camera. There was just too much excitement with all the airplanes, jets, Blue Angels, etc... Let's just say, we will be going back next year, and the year after, and the year after, etc.... It was that awesome!

The air show ended at 4pm, but by the time we got to our car, waited to get out of the parking lot and made the drive back, it was 7pm before we got home. That meant RUSHING to eat dinner, get costumes on, and out the door to trick or treat. It was very rushed, but I managed to get a few pictures and the girls had a wonderful time trick or treating. (Nick decided to stay home and answer the door)

Katie was the Mad Hatter.

My sister joined the girls. She went as Little Red Riding Hood to match Ashlan.

Ashlan and her Aunt Traci. Aren't they cute!

And of course, I had to take a picture of my youngest trick or treater! Miss Isla Belle. Cutest bat ever!

Fall Sale

In the springtime, Ashlan has been known to set up a lemonade/cookie stand here and there. But it's currently Fall and Ashlan was having the itch to sale something. That's when she came up with her own idea of selling halloween candy and roasted pumpkin seeds! I thought that was a great idea!

So we texted and called some friends/family once Ashlan had her stand set up to come and purchase some yummy roasted pumpkin seeds or a piece of candy!

Here is her stand she set up all by herself


Grandpa Morgan was eager to purchase and Ashlan was eager to sell!

Brent made a few purchases...

It was a beautiful Fall afternoon, perfect for Ashlan to set up shop! Thank you to everyone who visited Ashlan and made a purchase!

And special thanks for Grandma and Grandpa Morgan!!!

Haunted House

At Christmas time, we make Gingerbread Houses. So why not make a Haunted House at Halloween? Target sales the Haunted House kits....

Focusing on decorating...


And the cute final product! Looks haunted to me!