If dressing up as a zombie just isn't your thing, there are plenty of other ways to get into the Halloween spirit, without having to cover yourself in face paint/loo roll/glitter.
These Halloween cupcakes look cute, taste amazing and they're likely to score you lots of brownie points if you take them along to a party. Jules from Butcher Baker shares her pumpkin cupcakes recipe below:
Recipe: Halloween cupcakes
Makes around 9 cupcake sized cakes
Cakes
70ml vegetable oil or rapeseed oil
1 eggs
100g soft dark sugar
150g grated uncooked, peeled pumpkin (I finely dice it in the blender)
50g raisins
35g walnuts, chopped
90g self-raising flour
1 tiny pinch of salt
¼ tsp bicarbonate of soda
½ tsp ground cinnamon
¼ tsp freshly grated nutmeg or mace
¼ tsp ginger
Orange cream cheese icing
25g cream cheese, chilled (full fat works best)
25g butter, at room temperature
½ tsp vanilla extract
125g icing sugar, sifted
½ orange, zest only
1/2 packet of oreos blended for the edible dirt (optional)
Sugarpaste pumpkins
Orange sugarpaste
Cocktail stick
Black edible ink felt tip pen
Cloves
1. Preheat oven to 150°c. Line a muffin tin with liners.
2. In a large bowl beat the egg, then add the oil, sugar, pumpkin and nuts. Stir in the remaining ingredients and mix until well combined.
3. Fill the cases 2/3 full with the mixture. Bake for 30 min, or until cakes are risen and cooked through. Allow to cool on a wire before icing.
4. While the cakes are cooling start to make the sugarpaste pumpkins. Take a small sprout-sized ball of orange sugarpaste and roll in to a ball.
5. Place the ball on a surface and press gently to give a flat top and bottom.
6. Using the length of a cocktail, make indentations in the ball to make it look like a pumpkin. Using an edible ink felt tip draw the eyes and mouth on the pumpkin.
7. Place a clove, bud side down, in the top of the pumpkin. This is the stalk.
8. Beat together the cream cheese, vanilla, orange zest and butter then gradually add the icing sugar. The icing sugar will stiffen the icing the more you put in, but taste as you go along to make sure you don't make it too sweet. Once the icing is ready, spread onto cake.
9. Dust the top of the cake with the ground up Oreos then decorate with the sugarpaste pumpkin.
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