Tutorial Tuesday - Halloween Cookies

This awesome tutorial comes has been created for Kiwicakes by Lisa at The Whole Cake & Caboodle

Step1 These are the cutters I used but you can use similar substitutes. The round shape is a 5.5cm circle from the round nesting cookie cutters set. The bat and ghost are from the Halloween mini cookie cutter set. The tombstone is actually the centre of the handbag cookie cutter which comes in two pieces but you could use a small rectangle shape also. The square can be substituted for rounds, rectangles, or any shape you like or hand cut something if needed. Bake the amount you need. Everything is baked exactly as its cut by the cookie cutter - except the round shape which has a small portion cut off the base, with a knife to allow it to stand. There is no exact amount that you need to trim but about 1 cm up from the base of the circle works well

Step 2 Make a sugar syrup at a ratio of half sugar/half water. I used 1/4 cup water and 1/4 cup of sugar which will give you more than enough for dozens of complete cookies. This was then microwaved for about 2-3 minutes (or until boiled and dissolved), you may need to stir this during this time to mix in the sugar. If you wish you can also use piping gel as a glue

Step 3 Cover the moon and ghosts with white fondant rolled to the thickness you desire. I use thickness guides to ensure its even but you can always use kebab sticks or ice block sticks as well (new ones of course!) 

To adhere the fondant to the cookie brush the cookie lightly with sugar syrup. You should see a glisten as it sits on the surface.

Step 4 Once you have covered the moons turn them over and trim off the excess fondant from the base

Step 5 Mix a small amount of black into some white fondant lightly in a pulling twisting motion. This makes it mottled and gives a marbled effect to use on the tombstones

Step 6 Cut out required amount of tombstones, you can use the jagged edges of the rolled fondant to give a worn look to the tombstones or add your own cuts

Step 7 Either leave blank the tombstones blank or write words or names on with a food pen.Or stamp the tombstones with letters to spell out "HELP" or "RIP" or whatever takes your fancy. The press set I used here is the tiny alphabet message press set and you need to remember to put each one in backwards as shown so that it stamps correctly

Step 8 Using the sugar syrup glue ghost cookies to tombstones either in front, or behind, or in whatever position takes your fancy. Support them for an hour and they will stick well together. This can be done while you are making the rest of the cookies.

Step 9 Dust the edges of the moons if you desire. I used a smidgeon of black dust and a mix of a thin coat of yellow and then a touch of blue. Some were dusted also with a pearl white for shimmer.

Step 10 Glue bats to the moons in a pleasing position and glue black fondant to them. They look just as good plain or you can add detail as follows. Eyes can be marked on the bats with the end of a paintbrush as can the mouths on the ghosts. The bats eyes can then be further filled with small white fondant balls or piped with white royal icing. The wings of the bat were also marked to give more detail. You can also handpaint smaller bat shapes to give the illusion of a group in flight

Step 11 Eyeballs can be dotted in on both the bats and ghosts using a marker pen or a spot of black gel colouring on the tend of a toothpick. This gives a nice dot shape. You need to let the royal icing dry first in the bats eyes before marking the eyeball/pupil

Step 12 Take your base cookie and some fondant. Any colour can be used but I have used chocolate brown both for the taste and to simulate dirt. You need enough to provide a base for either the moon or tombstone cookie to sit in so judge according to the size of that cookie. Of course you can always use more and cover the whole cookie if you wish! Glue this in a blob to the cookie It needs to have a little depth of about 0.5-1.0 cm for support depending upon how much fondant you want to use.

Step 13 Take your tombstone or moon cookie and press the base into the chocolate fondant. This creates a pattern of the shape where your cookie will sit. Indent this with a tool to create a deeper trench almost to the base of the cookie for the moon or tombstone to sit in like so

Step 14 Use a touch of sugar glue in the trench (don't drown it though!!) and push the required cookie in. It should sit straight and be well supported but if it doesn’t feel secure or wobbles then gently push the fondant at the front and back up against the cookie or add some extra fondant balls to create a higher ground support. Glue all your cookies together in groups you are happy with. There should be room for at least two items on one base cookie if needed

Step 15 Mix up some green royal icing or you can use butter cream if you wish. I have used a leaf green gel colour with a few drops of brown to make it more khaki coloured, but use whatever colour you wish. A lime green looks very Halloween like!

Step 16 Randomly pipe grass using a small grass tip over the base cookie. It doesn't need to cover the whole cookie and doesn't need to cover the chocolate fondant either. Make long tufts in places or just small patches scattered. The royal icing when dry will help to further support the upright cookie if it is against this but isn't overly necessary as the chocolate fondant will give it more than enough support when dry. I made some zombie hands out of some fondant to break through the ground. I also scattered a few bones sprinkles.

Step 17 Use small cookies in amongst finished 3 dimensional scenes to create a great Halloween display, have a frightfully fun time.

Black lace, skulls and pearls cupcakes

Lately, I've notice an upward trend in the use of skulls for bridal showers & weddings (till death do us part). I think they'd also be great for birthdays and Halloween too.

The Black 3D skulls were very easy to make using this Wilton 3d skull chocolate mould and black candy melts. You mould them in two halves, but with a little melted chocolate they glue together seamlessly.

The cupcakes are baked in Black lace cupcake papers. They're great to bake with, as no muffin pan is needed to support them, they sit flat on a baking sheet, which means I can get two dozen on one shelf of the oven at a time.

I've finished the tops with a 1m swirl of buttercream icing and a few Kiwicakes own brand sugar pearls. The long strands of pearls were made with fondant, that has a little tylose added, which was moulded in these bead moulds (6mm & 3mm).

Spiderman Party Cupcakes - from Kiwicakes test kitchen

I have seen this effect in photographs before but never had a try myself - until today. With such bright colours it really is a simple and effective way of impressing Spiderman fans! I made a yummy golden cupcake for the design to sit on top of...

Cream 125 grams butter, 1 cup brown sugar and 1 teaspoon vanilla essence. Slowly add two large eggs, beating well throughout. Add 1/2 cup milk and a pinch of salt. Sift over 1+1/3 cups flour and 1+1/2 teaspoons baking powder. Mix again for 1-2 minutes until all combined and mixture is light and creamy. Spoon into black Foil Cases and bake at 175 degrees for about 15 minutes. Makes 12+ cupcakes. And our taste testers agree they are tops so you might be best to double everything and make 2 dozen!

When they have completely cooled, cut off the top dome so it is level with the top of the cupcake papers.

Mix up a simple butter icing to colour and spread over the cut surface...

Mix together with a bread and butter knife - 25 grams of butter melted, 3 tablespoons of boiling water, 1/2 teaspoon vanilla essence and 2 cups of icing sugar. This will achieve a runny consistency that will be easy to spread and pipe.

Colour 1/4 of the icing mixture black with a squirt of food grade colour and colour the remaining 3/4 with a good squirt of bright red. Spiderman fans will know if your colours end up pinkish or greyish (and guaranteed they will tell you!!) so its worth getting the right bright colourant.

Pop your black into a piping bag with a size 3 tip so you are ready to pipe. Its best to just work on one cupcake at a time so your icing is wet and the two colours blend nicely. Take a blob of red icing on your knife or spatula and cover the entire cut surface. Then work quickly with the black to pipe a generous dot in the middle of the red, as well as free handing three rough circles about 5mm apart as pictured above. It will look somewhat like a bulls eye. Then use a toothpick (or similar) to drag 8 equidistant lines from the middle of the cupcake to the outside.

If your icing firms up a little just give the red a few seconds in the microwave to bring it back to a nice runny consistency. By holding the black filled piping bag with the warmth of your hand for a minute it will do the same job.

And just like magic you have created a spider web effect. These can be made in any colour - and would also be good for halloween parties with a candy spider perched on top!

Another growing trend is to top cupcakes with icing decs We have them available in many of our different licensed ranges. Certainly a quick and easy way to echo your party's theme! Check out our party supplies page for over 50 differerent ranges of licensed party ware - everything from Strawberry Shortcake to John Deere Tractor!

Halloween fun

Yesterday we held a small Halloween party at our house for our 2 children and 3 of their friends. We had pumpkin decorating, as well as brownie and cupcake decorating. The Mum of the other 3 children is also a keen cake decorator, so we had heaps of fun. It was also a good excuse to get my Cricut Cake out and cut some Halloween shapes.

Start with one decorated party table (I stocked up on some of the cheap Halloween decorations in Spotlights $1 sale after Halloween last year)

I really liked my black cauldron in the centre of the table which housed our undecorated cupcakes.

I made the children some snacks - Fairy bread. Or should that be SCARY BREAD? To get an even coverage of sprinkles over the bread, I cut my bread, but before removing the cookie cutter, I add my sprinkles - this allows you to roll the sprinkles into all the nooks & crannies - and get them right out to the edges.

I found these great little cauldrons at spotlight, which were great for the cupcake decorating supplies.

Also great for the cocktail straws

We had plenty of spooky icing. I'm in love with this decorating bag holder, which I brought home from work, just for this purpose.

For some of their cupcake decorating, I cut out some designs for them, using the cricut. I did some pumpkins (the first one at 2'' was too big, so I scaled down to 1.5''), the cats are 1.5'' & 2''.

I gave them a lustre powder brush filled with Metallic flame frenzy lustre, so they could give them an orange metallic glow.

I also cut out some "Boo" - I did one for each child, before they arrived

I covered them in hologram white glitter, using corn syrup as glue, I let them dry for a couple of hours before the kids arrived. These are 1 1/4''.

My first one was far too big, but I didn't want to waste it, so I popped it on to a slice of brownie. I really like the way the lettering hangs over the brownie (it's a piece of white frosting sheet)

The children making the cupcakes were ages 3, 4, 5 & 7. They had a blast.

Pumpkin decorating was fun (no orange pumpkins could be found anywhere in town, so we had grey ones.

Brownie decorating was also fun, we had a variety of skeleton formations, in their brownies graves.

I thought the children did a great job with their cupcakes, it was a tired & happy bunch of kiddies at the end of their day.

Little Mr 4's work

Miss 7's work

Miss 3's work

What did you get up to for Halloween?

Need ideas for your HAlloween cupcakes, cookies, cake & sweet treats

Wilton has some amazing ideas for Halloween, along with full instructional downloads, that you can print out, for the how to This skull cake using the 3d skull pan is just awesome.

There are masses of Halloween cookie ideas using Halloween cookie cutters As well as Halloween cupcakes from simple designs, displayed on this Pick your poison cupcake stand priced at just 19.95, it's sure to instantly transform your Halloween table.

Through to displays to feed large hoards.

If you're wanting to go shopping for Halloween cookie cutters, cupcake papers, stands & more. Click here to go through to the Kiwicakes Halloween catalogue