Trick or Treat!

🎃Happy Hallowe'en🎃

And Happy All Saint's Day too.

As we all know, this is my favourite time of year. We have reached peak Autumn - orange leaves on the ground and trees, not insufferably cold, etc - fuzzy socks are acceptable, and it's all feeling just a little bit spooky. I have already covered my costume, it just remains to be seen if it can survive being worn! Party is not until Saturday.

Scoop the goop!

Last year, I worked really hard on my trick or treat bags and ended up missing the entire thing thanks to work. It was annoying putting in all that hard work and not getting to enjoy the fruits of my labour.
This year, I did not have this issue.

I decided to go for a similar approach to making my bags as last year. I ordered in some paper bags, as my stock got used up last year between Christmas and my Grandad's funeral, this time going for some cute pinks ones, because why not. They came in a pack of about 100, so I figured fifty was probably a good number to use. Last year, the bags got snapped up rather quickly and my partner was making emergency treats out of our own biscuit supply. These bags are also smaller which helped with curbing the urge to over fill.

I still have my spooky ice cube trays and I got a cute little fish one on my last trip to IKEA. So, making the chocolates was a must. I decided to mix it up a little this year, instead of buying gummy sweets and sticking them in I thought it would be better to make my own sweets. It seemed like the perfect opportunity to make some honeycomb! And to make it more trick or treat-y, I would only put it in some of the chocolates. In a last minute brainwave, I decided to crack out some vegan fudge too, so I could cater for my family as well. I tried to save some bags last year, but they'd gone before I'd even had the epiphany!

Smashing!

Anyone else thinks the one above the handle looks like a bird?

To maximise the amount of bags, I only put one of each goodie in them but it felt the bag needed bulking up with something else. Popcorn is a nice and easy way to pad out the bags. When we do a movie night, we often flavour popcorn with cinnamon sugar - as I randomly have a jar of that - but I know that cinnamon can be a bit of an acquired taste. I've only recently started to like it myself! I thought it'd be fun and in the spirit of Hallowe'en to make them sweet and salty. There was plenty of honeycomb dust left over after breaking it into smaller pieces, so I used that for my "sweet" flavour.

Waiting to be filled.

Taking over my kitchen!

With my trick or treat bags ready, all that was left to do was the pumpkins! Last year's design was a little simple as my artistic skills are severely lacking. But this year, I thought I should give it a proper go instead of a blob-like shape passing for a shark. The question was what.

I wanted to keep the aquatic theme, as that is my wheelhouse. I thought about doing a jellyfish but ultimately decided against it, as I figured the squiggly tentacles would be outside my artistic remit. I needed something with a recognisable outline but would be a little easier to do. The answer was staring me in the face.

A mermaid.

Say hello to Ariel. I stole her voice. No big deal.

Mermaid pumpkin and treats ready for nightfall!

This was the absolute limit of my artistic skills, I am not going to lie! I don't have any proper pumpkin carving tools as I am loathe to buy those plastic ones. They bend too quickly and where do you keep them for the rest of the year? So I was using a combination of kitchen knives and tools my partner kept magicking from the garage. At one point, I felt like Christine McConnell. I had a spinning electric sander thing, attempting to smooth out some of the pointy edges!

All the effort was worth it. We had a steady stream of trick or treaters pretty much as soon as it got dark. All the bags went and will hopefully be enjoyed. (Although, there were definitely some toothless toddlers who will struggle with the honeycomb!) There were some great costumes as well. One kid dressed as a murder clown and I thought we'd flashed back to summer of 2017! Another was a headless vampire-y thing. Lots of pirates, some light up shoes, and all the thank yous - nice to see manners. (After working seven years in food service, you begin to believe they don't exist anymore.) One supervising parent even admired my pumpkin!

If you squint you'll see a "vegan option available" sign!

I am really happy with how everything turned out this year. The only hiccough is that some of the tails fell off the fish as I was decanting. I think that can be remedied by using a touch more chocolate in them. It's hard to judge how far it will go across the trays, but I used four bars of chocolate this year and that covered them all. There were a couple which were thicker than others, so I just need to spread them a little more evenly next year.

How were your Hallowe'ens? What pumpkin design did you go for? Did you trick more than treat? Lemme know below!

Listening to: This Is Selena Gomez (Yes, I know it should be a spooky playlist, but new tracks have dropped. She is a queen.)