Happy Halloween everyone! I really love this time of year, my flat is currently decorated with pumpkins, candles, cobwebs and skulls, and I've also spread the Halloween 'fear' into the office as well. I always get involved in dressing up and carving pumpkins, it's so much fun! One of the best parts for me is Halloween and autumnal baking. I love to bake with pumpkin and try and make my bakes suitably scary. These cake truffles are no exception, filled with autumn flavours and then surrounded by Halloween spookiness! Here's how to make them...
I started by making the gingerbread biscuit middle of the truffles. I made a few more than I needed as this was an idea I invented, but it's better to make too many than too little so I'll give you the amounts I used. I started by whizzing up 200g ginger biscuits in a food processor.
I melted 75g butter and mixed it into the biscuit crumbs.
I grabbed bits of the the mixture and rolled them into small balls, about the size of a blueberry. I placed them onto a lined baking tray. I then put them in the freezer for 3 hours.
To make the cakes I used Two Chicks new product - free range whole egg. You may have seen their liquid egg white before, which is super convenient for making meringues without having to worry about what to do with the leftover egg yolks. Now they've also released this one which includes the yolks, so you can bake with it, or make omelettes and quiches for example. I found it very useful for recipes where you want to change the quantities, you can't half an actual egg, but with this product you can use half an eggs worth!
To make the cakes I started by mixing together 115ml vegetable oil, 90ml Two Chicks liquid whole egg, 200g caster sugar and 1 tsp vanilla extract.
I then added 225g plain flour, 3 tsp cinnamon, 1 tsp mixed spice, and 1 tsp baking powder and mixed in. Finally I folded in 200g pumpkin puree (I use Libbys).
I put the batter into 12 cupcake cases to bake them. It doesn't really matter how you bake the mixture, but I find cupcakes quick to cook and to cool.
I baked them on 180C/350F/Gas Mark 4 for 20 minutes. I left them to cool fully.
When the cake was cool I crumbed it in the food processor.
Depending on how much your cake weighs, you need half the amount of full fat cream cheese. Mine weighed 700g so I used 350g cream cheese. I mixed it all together.
I got the ginger biscuit balls out of the freezer, grabbed some pumpkin cake mixture and made a patty. I placed a ginger biscuit ball in the middle.
I then wrapped the cake mixture around the biscuit and rolled it into a ball.
Once all of the cake was used up, I put them back into the freezer for another 3 hours, or until frozen fully.
To cover the cake truffles I used Renshaw Colour Melts in white. I simply dipped the cake truffles in and then set them onto baking paper. The chocolate sets really quickly because they are so cold from the freezer. You can also use white chocolate to cover them, but it creates a more yellowish appearance. To paint on the ghost eyes and mouth I melted a few blocks of dark chocolate and painted them on with a small paintbrush. I also painted 'Boo!' on a few of them too.
I was so pleased with the reaction I got for these! There were 'wows' all round, and they all disappeared in less than an hour. Even people who weren't convinced about pumpkin were loving them. It was such a great feeling. The pumpkin and ginger flavours went together perfectly. Let me know if you make these and what you think!
I'm entering these spooky treats into this month's Treat Petite, hosted by Cakeyboi. The theme is Black and Orange.
I'm also entering them into Tea Time Treats hosted by Lavender & Lovage where the theme is Halloween & Bonfire Night Treats.
Pumpkin cupcakes recipe adapted from Marie Claire.
