Hallowonderful ! and baking

I generally enjoy Halloween, but I don't get overly dramatic about it one way or the other. This year, we got to dress up twice: once at our church's trunk-or-treat, and also for a Halloween party.

The Halloween party hosted by David Bowie from Labyrinth:

(I won't show a photo of the host in his costume because some of you might be frightened at its likeness to the photo above.)

The Ghost + Peter Pan at Trunk-or-Treat (jonny=ghost):


Peter Pan + Tinkerbell (me and my buddy Waishauna)


For Saturday... what do you get when you add white tights


...a golden egg


...and a golden ticket?


Veruca Salt, of course!

Veruca Salt + Mike TV (from Willie Wonka):



This weekend, my KitchenAid and I got to work. We bonded.

First, for the party, I decided to try a recipe from October's Real Simple issue that looked so pretty and tasty:

Pumpkin Cupcakes with Cream Cheese Frosting [full recipe here]


not so far off from their photo?

um, yeah...

Cupcakes in the tin (with water in the empty cups to keep the tin from getting too hot, trick my mama taught me):


Cooling on my wonderful cooling racks [who knew a human being could be such an evangelist for cooling racks, but seriously if you don't have one of these, I highly recommend looking into them, from Williams-Sonoma. you will not be sorry. Write a letter to Santa.]


Lovely cream cheese frosting:


GUESS WHAT!

I gathered my pennies and went to Macy's to get the absolutely wonderful Martha Stewart Cupcake Carrier [first mentioned here]. Boy oh boy!




Sunday, I had two baking projects.

1. Iced Lemon Cookies for my friend Leanne's birthday. [If you want the recipe for this one, cozy up to the wonderful Mrs Debbie Edwards. Fantastic.]


Leanne doesn't like a ton of glaze, so I went for the drizzle:



2. Joy the Baker's Pumpkin Cookies with butterscotch chips:


Half of the batch I frosted with leftover cream cheese frosting from the cupcakes (phone pictures, sorry):




Luckily, all of these baked goods had destinations...otherwise Jonny and I would be rolling around our house. Good thing we're in the midst of half-marathon training.

Me like baking.