Spooky Halloween Lego!

Whether you’re young or old chances are that you know at least one person who loves Lego building and what better excuse to grab out the bricks than Halloween! Plus it’s a fab way to entertain your little ones this half term.

Even if you’re not a fan of the holiday these great little Lego building tutorials from the folks at LEGOLAND Discovery Manchester are sure to inspire you with a pumpkin and ghost!

Credits: LEGO® video tutorials with Master Model Builder Alex Bidolak at the kids attraction LEGOLAND Discovery Centre Manchester

Pumpkin Pie-Lets Recipe!

If I were to ask you to think of a vegetable associated with Halloween, you’d most likely reply ‘Pumpkin!’ We carve them year on year but they are often underused as an ingredient in the UK. I was first introduced to Pumpkin Pie by an American friend and I’ve adored it ever since. All the recipes I have ever tried though make at least 2-3 large pies, which I found a struggle to fit in the fridge. I therefore adapted the classic recipe to make these gorgeous mini Pumpkin Pie-lets. Made in a muffin tin, they are the perfect size to pick up in your hand, or eat in a bowl dowsed with cream. Even if you are not a fan of Halloween, these are the perfect Autumnal dessert. It’s also a sneaky way to get your children to eat a vegetable, my youngest absolutely loves them!

 

What You’ll Need

150g/ 6oz SR Flour

100g/ 4oz Butter

Pinch Salt

1 ½ Tbsp Water

85g/ 3oz Caster Sugar

1 Tsp Cinnamon

½ Tsp Ground Cloves

½ Tsp Ground Allspice

¼ Tsp Ground Ginger

2 Eggs

425g/ 15oz Pumpkin Purée

200ml/ 6fl oz Evaporated Milk

 

Directions

Preheat the oven to 200C/ 400F/ Gas Mark 6.

In a large mixing bowl rub together the flour, salt and butter until it resembles fine breadcrumbs. Add in the water and bring together with your hand to form a soft dough.

Roll out the pastry on a lightly floured surface and using a large round cutter, cut out 12 circles. With any leftover pastry cut out small decorations such as stars or pumpkins.

Lightly grease a 12 cup Muffin Tin. Gently line each muffin cup with a circle of pastry, carefully pressing down with your fingers.

In a large mixing bowl mix together the caster sugar, cinnamon, ground cloves, ground allspice, ginger, eggs, pumpkin and evaporated milk. Use a balloon whisk to ensure a light fluffy mixture.

Pour the pumpkin mixture carefully into each lined muffin cup. Then gently place one of the pastry decorations you made earlier on top of each.

Place into the oven for 3-5 minutes. Then turn the temperature down to 150C/ 300F/ Gas Mark 2 and bake for approximately 20 minutes or until each mini pie-let is firm to the touch. You can also gently insert a knife, when it comes out clean the pie-lets are cooked.

The pie-lets can be eaten hot or cold, I personally prefer them cooled and straight from the fridge with a dollop of whipped cream. They also look cute dusted with icing sugar.

Tip. Some select supermarkets sell tinned Pumpkin which is perfect for this recipe. You can also buy it online. If you can’t find tinned however, you can make your own puree by roasting a Pumpkin. Full instructions are on the blog here.

Butternut Squash also makes an acceptable substitute for Pumpkin.

Parties That Wow! Book Review

Time for another book review. As I am sure you are all well aware the party season is well and truly upon us. But do you cower away from such social occasions or embrace, decorate and enjoy!? With this question in mind I was very grateful to receive a copy of Parties That Wow by Jonathan Fong from GMC Publications.

This book is filled with so many gorgeous ideas for a party theme that it is hard to choose, but being as our party was instead of a Halloween party I let the children decide and they wanted a Spy Party!
In truth our party took ideas from two themes detailed in the book, elements which we thought worked well together to create the look we wanted. The end result?

Our Top Secret place settings.

 

Holographic gemstones, this little device is a blog post in itself, but it worked brilliantly for our Spy theme

We couldn’t leave James Bond out of the proceedings so he very kindly decorated our Pumpkin (big thanks to my husband and his rather excellant carving skills here).

A UV light reveals what was hidden on the place cards (this caused a lot of fun and giggles as everyone found their places).

 

The completed table, with it’s laser lights, coins, spooky spiders and more. There was also a map with the secret location of Spy headquarters, but naturally I couldn’t reveal that 😛
So…..
Would I recommend this book? Yes I would. It’s a great source of ideas and inspiration for all year round events. The author Jonathan clearly goes above and beyond for his party guests and even if you can’t completely replicate all his ideas they are a great starting point.
Could it be improved in anyway? Yes I think it could. Unfortunately not all the themes have the same depth of instructions or ideas, some are perfect others a little shallow I felt. I would also suggest that some of Jonathan’s ideas would be hard to reproduce, so perhaps a few alternative suggestions. I also would have liked to see some ideas for themed food, although the author does admit that he is no cook. But overall I loved the book and can’t wait to plan my next event!
Book Details
Title: Parties That Wow

Author: Jonathan Fong

ISBN: 9780823099788

RRP: £12.99

Publisher: Watson-Guptill

Publication Date: Autumn 2007.