Halloween Desserts

Halloween Desserts...need some ideas before Halloween on Wednesday, here's a peek at some cookies, cake pops, cupcakes and brownies I recently created for a party last weekend! I snapped a few behind the scenes shots as I was decorating the cookies and tombstones for the brownie graveyards! IHope you enjoy these Halloween treats!

I love how these brownie graveyards turned out! Thanks to my new Chicago Metallic Slice Solutions Brownie Pan, I was able to create uniform size brownies and didn't even have to cut them...the pan did all the work! Do you have one of these pans? If not I highly suggest getting one...add it to your Christmas list! Decorated with black fondant tombstones, a candy pumpkin and some green buttercream grass to complete the look.

Red Velvet Cupcakes with Cream Cheese Frosting

Strawberry Cupcakes with Strawberry Lemon Cream Cheese Frosting

Before I took the desserts to the customer, I set up a mini display in my back yard on the new Farm table my husband built for me! I came across this amazingly beautiful DIY Farm Table on the blog Our Vintage Home Love and immediately fell in love and said I need one of these for my dining room! I showed my husband the blog post with the instructions, gathered the list of supplies we needed and off to Lowe's we went. Within a few hours he had made this table! Lucky for us we had an old desk in our shed that we were able to use as the base, it just had to be painted white. So we bought the pine boards, wood stain and sanding paper for the top and probably spent less than $50 on this entire project! If you have never checked out Our Vintage Home Love before, it is an amazing site with a great story behind it and some awesome DIY inspiration! I think I seriously sat and clinked on every tab and just kept browsing and browsing for a few hours once I discovered their site! So know that you know a little about our table, let's get back to the sweet stuff!

Here's a few more pictures of all the finished Halloween treats! Hope you all have a fabulous Halloween!

Candy Bar Cake

Halloween is only a few days away...have you been stocking up on all your candy for the trick-or-treaters? I must admit I haven't gone to the store to load up, but will definitely be making a trip this weekend to pick up some Butterfingers, M&M's, Reese's Cups and my all time favorite Snicker's! It has been way too long since I sank my teeth into the chocolate, caramel and nutty goodness of a Snicker's bar. Just thinking about grabbing a bag of this candy took me back to a few months ago when I made this Candy Bar Cake from the March, Chocolate Issue of Food Network Magazine. This is one of my favorite magazines to get in the mail each month because every recipe, especially the desserts always look amazing!

So when I saw the CHOCOLATE issue I was in heaven. While doing a quick flip through the pages I stumbled upon this cake and immediately I thought of a gigantic Snicker's Bar! So I gave the recipe a try and took it to a cookout with some friends and it was a huge hit! The best part about this recipe...there is NO BAKING involved. That's right, the base of the cake is pound cake! Now don't get me wrong I absolutely love to bake, but when you are in a pinch and need a quick, easy and delicious dessert you can't go wrong with this cake. It's all about combining a few key ingredients and layering them one on top of the other.

The base of the cake is pound cake, with a layer of chocolate buttercream, a layer of dulce de leche and salted peanuts and then the entire thing is coated in chocolate! YUM! So if you are looking to create a treat to impress your Halloween Party quests this year, you can't go wrong with this Candy Bar Cake! Check out the recipe here!

Cake Art Party Store

I recently had the opportunity to visit Cake Art Party Store. Ever heard of it before? Well if you know Bakerella, the Queen of Cake Pops then I'm sure you have seen her mention this a time or two or three on her blog! This is her go to shop for all things caking, baking and decorating! On a recent trip back to Mobile from Clemson, SC I convinced my amazing husband to veer off the interstate a few miles and stop in this baker's paradise! We couldn't have timed this trip any more perfectly because we literally were driving down the interstate through Atlanta and Cake Art popped in my head b/c I knew it was somewhere close by. I quickly searched for it on my iphone and what do you know we were within 10 minutes of the store! I nicely begged my husband to let us stop (keep in mind this is after he had already agreed to let me stop at IKEA in Atlanta too...isn't he great!), as this was probably the one and only time I would ever get to shop where Bakerella does! He agreed and we rolled into the parking lot right as the doors were opening for the day! Actually, I take that back, it would have been even more perfect if I had walked into the store and seen Bakerella in there shopping herself! I think I must have just missed her by a few days, based on her most recent Halloween post of all the goodies she grabbed at Cake Art!

So of course as I entered this amazing store of cake pans, cookie cutters, fondant, sprinkles, and so much more, I obviously had to get out my camera and take a few photos as I walked up and down every aisle in awe of the wide variety of products they had available! We definitely don't have anything quite like this in Mobile.

The Halloween section hit me in the face first! Oh the possibilities of the scary, creepy and spooky Halloween treats that could be created with all of this stuff! I quickly grabbed a 3 pack cookie cutter set, which included a tombstone that I needed for an upcoming project and headed on to the next isle.

Cake boards...

and cake separator plates and pillars! Look at all those sizes available!

Fondant in every color of the rainbow! I would love to have this readily available to me, considering I am always tinting my own fondant colors by hand! This would be a huge time saver!

Oh look at all those piping bags!

And edible glitter and shimmer to make your sweets fancy!

An adorable mini cake pan in the shape of a popsicle! How cute...I didn't buy this, but now I'm wishing I had!

Cookie cutters! Can never have enough cookie cutters right? I snagged a pack of the 3-piece Ice Cream Cone set!

For the love of cake pans! Round, square, rectangle and all kinds of customized shapes!

Sprinkles, sprinkles and more sprinkles! Definitely threw a few bottles of these in my basket!

Sugar pearls! I wanted to grab a bag of every color, but I didn't!

The wall of color! Every color imaginable to use for tinting icings for cake and cookie decorating! Of course I grabbed an assorted box of AmeriColor since cookie decorating was in my near future!

I'm so glad I got to make a quick stop at Cake Art! Maybe someday I'll be lucky enough to stop there again and shop for a little bit longer! I was literally racing down the isles like a mad women snapping photos, grabbing goodies and trying to get out of there as quickly as possible while my husband was entertaining my 6 month old son!

Here's what I came away with from my shopping spree! Oh and I did by some Push Pop containers which I forgot to include in the photo! Luckily Cake Art sells everything online too so I can always order what I need for future baking projects and have it shipped directly to my door! Not nearly as fun as seeing everything in person but I guess it will have to do since they are 5 hours away from where I live!

Have you ever been to Cake Art? What is your favorite place to buy cake supplies?

Chocolate & Peanut Butter Cupcakes with Halloween Candy Bark

Halloween is quickly approaching, so you know what that means...it's time to stock up on candy! There are a few Halloween candy staples that I must keep in my stash the entire month of October, which include Reese Pieces, Reese Cups, Peanut M&Ms and Butterfinger! YUM! As you can see the common theme with all these candies seems to be peanuts & peanut butter! So I had the idea to create a fabulous Halloween Candy bark to use a decoration on top of some chocolate and peanut butter cupcakes! This recipe was definitely created for all you chocolate and peanut butter lovers out there!

I love the pops or orange and yellow in the Halloween bark! I'm sharing the recipe for the cupcakes, candy bark and even a super cute way to individually package up these cupcakes for all your trick-or-treaters over at Half Baked!  So head on over and check it out! Definitely look around a bit while you are there too and drool over her fabulous Fresh Apple Donuts!

I've got a few more candy themed recipe ideas up my sleeve, so check back soon! What's your favorite Halloween Candy!

Happy Friday!