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Fun Halloween Food

Inspiration-for-Halloween-food-TheGingerbreadMum

Halloween is quickly approaching. It’s taken me a bit to get into celebrating it, but having a monster-loving boy, who already decided last month what his Halloween costume would be, has helped.

There are so many amazingly creative food ideas out there to make the most of the spooky season, but if you have monster lovers at home there’s no reason why you can’t make some of these fun creations all year round.

Here are my favourites this year and check out my previous posts (here and here) for more inspiration.

My Fussy Eater: Spooky Spider Rice Cakes

A healthy snack to balance those ‘trick or treat’ sweeties, Ciara at My Fussy Eater has made her Spooky Spiders from bite-sized rice cakes, blackberries and grapes.

TexanErin Baking: Halloween Monster Mouths

Another healthy Halloween treat are these Monster Mouths from Texanerin Baking.  I love the oozing dripping strawberry jam blood!

Cooking With Curls: Toxic Waste Mac and Cheese

Still keeping it healthy, Cooking With Curls‘ Toxic Waste Mac and Cheese should be a big hit with any Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtle fans while giving them a good dose of spinach and cauliflower (but they don’t need to know that!).

The Bearfoot Baker: Pumpkin Cakes

How cute are these cupcake Jack-O-Lanterns from Lisa at The Bearfoot Baker?

Half Baked Harvest: Hocus Pocus Spellbook Brownies

Tieghan from Half Baked Harvest created these scrumptious and cute Hocus Pocus Spellbook Brownies.

Yummy Crumble: Monster Strawberry Cupcakes

Yummy Crumble’s Monster Strawberry Cupcakes remind me of Audrey II as a baby plant from A Little Shop of Horrors, cute but also rather scary.

Better Homes and Gardens: Simple Halloween Cupcakes

These cupcakes from Better Homes and Gardens are at the top of my list for my upcoming school bake sale because they scream “Halloween!” while taking very little effort to make.

Barman's Journal: Green Monster Shot

Halloween food doesn’t have to only be for kids. I love this sea monster (or is it a Kraken?!) coming out of the green depths that’s actually a tequila and green Bloody Mary shot created by Barman’s Journal.

Kitchen Table Scraps: Creepy Panna Cotta

Who knew a coconut panna cotta, a slice of kiwi, a raisin and some raspberry coulis could be so creepy! Renee at Kitchen Table Scraps has transformed an ordinary dessert into a spooky spectacle.

Which one is your favourite?

For more inspiration, take a look at my Halloween Food and Fun board on Pinterest.

The Kingsmill Great White Challenge

I do love a challenge, especially one that involves food, so when Kingsmill invited us to take part in their Great White Challenge I jumped at the chance.

For three days we had to replace our normal loaf of bread with Kingsmill Great White and use it as creatively and healthily as we could.  Our creations also had to have the ‘wow’ factor, kind of like The X Factor but with sandwiches instead of singers!

I don’t usually buy white bread, especially not for Nicholas, although I do secretly love a slice of white toasted and slathered in butter. Thankfully Kingsmill Great White contains as much fibre as wholemeal bread with 7.0g fibre per 100g (interestingly Kingsmill Tasty Wholemeal contains 6.2g fibre per 100g).

breadNicholas, unlike his Italian papà, loves toast and sandwiches, and happily eats them every day. However, he’s recently gone from happily eating his crusts to refusing to eat them.

But back to the challenge. As soon as I heard the bread’s name there was only one possibility for me – we were going on an undersea adventure in search of great white sharks!

Mask and snorkel? Check!

Mask and snorkel? Check!

Shark pjs? Check!

Shark pjs? Check!

We actually had a false start to the challenge as it was postponed a week at the last moment, but I didn’t want our efforts to go to waste. We had turtle toast with peanut butter and a teeny bit of nutella for breakfast to celebrate World Turtle Day. Then Nicholas very excitedly told me when I picked him up from pre-school that he’d eaten TWO sharks at lunch (and there were only crumbs left as evidence). Two great whites already spotted!

Kingsmill Great WhiteOn to the official challenge. On Friday we had ‘under the sea’ sugar-free French toast for breakfast, jellyfish and fish sandwiches for lunch and some shark fin carrot soup for dinner. I made the jellyfish tentacles from the leftover crusts and (shock, horror) they were the very first things Nicholas ate! Number of great whites spotted – 1

Kingsmill Great WhiteOn Saturday morning a fishy in a hole gave us lots of energy, then later our Playmobil friend went a little crazy when she spotted not one but two great whites lurking in our salad sandwiches. Number of great whites spotted – 2

Kingsmill Great WhiteWe started our final day of the challenge with crab toast (again with peanut butter and a little bit of nutella) inspired by one of Nicholas’ books (and the crab legs, made from crusts, were the first to be eaten!). I then used some of the bread chopped up to make healthy mini savoury bread puddings for lunch and I made Nicholas’ into another turtle (this is also a great way to use up any crusts or end pieces nobody eats). And finally, in the evening, we had summer pudding (another fab way to use up older bread). Unfortunately my octopus turned out more like a spider, but he still was very much appreciated! Number of great whites spotted – 0

Kingsmill Great White

Total number of great whites spotted – 5!

We had lots of fun making and eating our creations, and I loved see Nicholas enthusiastically eating his crusts 😉

You can see lots of other wonderfully original and healthy creations by other bloggers by searching #KingsmillGreatWhite on Twitter or Instagram. Kingsmill also have a fantastic free Lunch Book with recipes all created by kids (Hayley’s Funky Turtle is definitely my favourite).

Some of the other bloggers who did the challenge and their fabulous creations:
Boo Roo and Tigger Too
Mummy Mishaps
Mummy Mum Mum
Mummy’s Space

Disclosure: we were compensated by Kingsmill for participating in their challenge. My opinions are honest and my own.

Easter inspiration 2014

It’s almost time for the Easter Bunny to visit and this year I haven’t made any Easter-themed lunches and snacks.

We were lucky to be able to spend two weeks in the sun in Marsa Alam, Egypt and I really enjoyed having time off from meal preparation. Also having come back home just a week ago I’ve been making the most of my time with Nicholas before he starts preschool full-time after Easter (this has involved lots of playing and dancing together with not that much thought for food!).

Oh, and there’s been lots of questions about how big the Easter Bunny is, a bit of disbelief when I admit I’ve never seen him and then a slight concern about how he gets in the house – questions I wasn’t prepared for. What do your little ones ask about Easter?

Anyway, if you’re looking for some last minute inspiration, here are some of my favourites with a couple of my efforts from last year thrown in.

Happy Easter!

EasterJill, over at Meet the Dubiens, has created the cutest plate of chicks in their nest. Check out her wonderful website for other adorable Easter food.

Bento, Monsters Easter Chick BurgerMing, who blogs at Bento, Monsters, has come up with a wonderful Easter twist on a simple cheese burger.

EasterLittle Miss Bento has turned Japanese curry buns into a nest of cute chicks.

Lunarbell Lunch Easter BasketSarah, who is Lunarbell Lunch on Instagram, has made the most adorable Easter basket.

And some of my efforts from last year:

Easter chicks

Easter chicks

The Easter Bunny

The Easter Bunny

Easter egg snacking plate

Easter egg snacking plate

You can find some more inspiration from my Easter round-up post last year.

Wishing you all a very happy Easter.

 

Cute Lunches: Perry the Penguin

Costa Coffee challenged us to take their newest gingerbread offering, Perry the Penguin, on lots of adventures for the next three days. Feel free to follow all the fun we’re having with Perry on Twitter and Instagram, as well as the adventures he’s having with other bloggers (just search for #perryontour). We’ll do a round-up of all the fun we’ve had on Monday.

Inspired by our new penguin house guest, I made Nicholas a cute penguin lunch. It was the perfect opportunity to finally try making the adorable penguins I often see in the bento boxes on my Instagram feed.

bento, cute food

To make the bigger penguin, I followed Ming’s from Bento, Monsters very easy instructions.

I used a normal boiled chicken egg, a sheet of nori and corn kernels. Ming suggests sticking the nori to the egg with a little mayonnaise; I just lightly wet the egg and it stuck well (using the nori was actually much easier than I’d anticipated). I used some mashed up egg (from the hard-boiled egg I didn’t manage to peel very well!) to stick the corn kernel feet on.

The smaller penguins are made from black grapes. There are lots of little penguins, especially on Pinterest, made from black olives, but I thought Nicholas would prefer grapes to olives.

I cut a thin slice off the fronts of the two larger grapes for the penguins’ tummies. I threaded the two smaller grapes on top for the heads using cut lollypop sticks. You could also use toothpicks, but be very careful of these with little ones. The feet and beaks are small triangles cut from a clementine/mandarine segment. Then I added some yogurt to make their tummies white and tiny dots of yogurt for their eyes.

Thank you to Eats Amazing for the tortilla snowflake inspiration. We actually had two more smaller filled snowflake tortillas on the side.

I’m linking up to Fun Food Friday, a weekly round-up of fun and creative food by the lovely Grace of Eats Amazing.

Eats-Amazing-Fun-Food-Friday