Trick VS Treat Bake Off

It had been a while since we have had a bake off at work so in honour of Breast Cancer Awareness month we decide to combine a charity bake off with the upcoming seasonal festivities of Hallowean. The Trick VS Treat bake off was born, bakers were asked to create either creepy or pretty bakes and then donations towards the cakes would raise the money.

I created a poster to help build the hype and on the day there was a clear divide on the table between the sweet treats and creepy concoctions. There were meringue ghosts, mummy biscuits, cupcakes decorated with butterflies, bats, decapitated jelly babies and pumpkins plus pretty lemon biscuits, spiderweb millionaires shortbread and my favourite was the peanut butter bites.

I went for the Chocolate and Guinness cupcakes (now my signature bake even though I nicked it from Nigella) but decorated them differently. The first were classically pretty with white frosting and sprinkled with silver edible glitter, then wrapped in pretty cupcake sleeves with lasercut flowers. The second batch were decorated with green icing and glitter to look like grass (the actual black cake represented the soil) then gingerbread tombstones were popped on the top for a suitable creepy but tasty treat.

The Chocolate and Guinness cake recipe can be found here and the gingerbread biscuit recipe is below, originally from BBC food.

We raised an amazing £202.47 for Breast Cancer Care - not bad for some baked flour, sugar and eggs.

Gingerbread Tombstones

Ingredients:

• 350g plain flour

• 1/2 tsp ground ginger

• 1 tsp bicarbonate of soda

• 100g oz butter, cut into cubes

• 175g  light soft brown sugar

• 4 tbsp golden syrup

• 1 free-range egg, lightly beaten

For the icing: 

• 150g icing sugar

• 8 tablespoons of cold water

Method:

• For the ginger biscuit tombstones, place the flour, ginger and bicarbonate of soda into a mixing bowl. Rub the butter in with your fingertips until the mixture resembles fine breadcrumbs.

• Add the sugar, syrup and egg and mix together until it forms a soft dough. Wrap in cling film and chill in the fridge for 30 minutes.

• Pre-heat the oven to 180C/350F/gas 4.

• Roll out the dough on a lightly floured surface and cut out your shapes – you will only need a few for the cake so cut out some other Halloween shapes for extra biscuits.

• Place the shapes on to greased baking sheets (leaving at least 3cm between biscuits as they will spread) and bake in the oven for 10-12 minutes. Remove from the sheets with a palette knife and place onto a wire rack to cool completely before decorating with white icing.

• Make the icing just before you are ready to pipe as it will set if made too early, simply mix the icing sugar and the water, adding a couple of tablespoons of water at a time until you have a thick but pipable consitantly. Pop in a piping bag and decorate as you see fit.