Hallowe'en/Samhain Celebration Ideas

It's Hallowe'en/Samhain tomorrow, so I thought I'd do a quick post on ideas for celebrating it. I used to like Hallowe'en when I was younger and when I started celebrating the sabbats in 2010, Samhain became my favourite. :)

I did a post yesterday on my other blog Star Sparkle Blog about Hallowe'en, which includes some of my fave Hallowe'en/and or horror themed books, films and TV shows (plus a couple of songs). You can check it out here: https://starsparklex.blogspot.com/2016/10/halloween-faves-round-up.html

Michaela at Penniless Pagan has some good tips for celebrating Samhain without spending anything: http://www.pennilesspagan.com/2016/10/5-ways-to-celebrate-samhain-without.html

I also like her post on honouring loved ones who have passed away (Samhain is a good festival to do this since it's a time when the veils between the worlds are thinner and the dead are thought to come back to visit their family/people who were important to them in life): http://www.pennilesspagan.com/2016/10/honor-your-transcended-loved-ones.html

I found it was nice to think about my grandparents, what they taught me and things I used to do with them. :)

Also Althea at Modern Witch's Guide to Life has some history on Hallowe'en and ideas for celebrating:  http://modern-witch.es/enchanted-living/13-witchy-ideas-to-celebrate-halloween

And finally here's a Samhain post on Tess Whitehurst's site: https://tesswhitehurst.com/10-ways-to-celebrate-the-ancient-holiday-of-samhain-aka-halloween/ (redirects to an updated post)



Hope you enjoy the links and have a great Hallowe'en and/or Samhain (depending on how you celebrate. :) I just did my pumpkin a bit earlier and tomorrow I'm going to make the Demon's Blood drink I usually make and have some food. I'll probably make some gingerbread skeletons or bats as well. I made gingerbread bats with chocolate on in 2013 and skeletons with icing last year, so I might combine the recipes this year and put chocolate on the skeletons, lol. I'll do a post about it soon.

Happy Hallowe'en/Samhain! :) How do you celebrate?


Photo: Tesco Holmbush's Hallowe'en display. Copyright Moonsparkle 2016.

Cornflake Choc Chip Cookies

Yesterday I made some cornflake choc chip cookies. It's a recipe from vlogger/blogger Tanya Burr's cookbook Tanya Bakes, which was featured in New magazine.You can find the recipe here: http://www.instyle.co.uk/fitness-wellbeing/tanya-burr-recipes

Update 18/4/20: Recipe links are now gone unfortunately and I don't the New mag link works anymore, I got a "Potential security risk" warning when clicking on it. :( But you can find the cornflake cookies recipe here: http://louloves01.blogspot.com/2016/07/tanya-burrs-cornflake-chocolate-chip.html

I've made crispy and cornflakes cakes (with chocolate and Rice Krispies or cornflakes) before but I've never put cornflakes in cookies, so I thought it would be good to try the recipe. I used two baking trays because I couldn't fit them all on the same one and good job I did because I burnt the first lot! lol. I kept watching the second lot but they still got a bit burnt.  :( (I'm not completely used to the new oven/cooker yet). I had enough dough left to make two smaller cookies so I had one more go. I kept watching them and kept the oven lower and this time they came out golden, lol.

They did taste quite nice in the end. I didn't have sea salt so used a pinch of table salt and I didn't have golden caster sugar either, so mixed ordinary caster sugar and light brown sugar. I also didn't have a lot of chocolate chips left (I bought them recently to use for No-bake energy balls) so I just used what I had. Not all of the cookies got chocolate chips in but they taste fine without, lol. Sometimes you feel like making something but can't afford to buy all the extra ingredients right now, so it was good that I had most of the ingredients on hand and that this recipe is adaptable.

Here is a picture of the last two cookies which came out the best:

 I'd like to bake some more cookies in the future (I don't make them that often). I might have a go at Tanya's chocolate cookies sometime.

 Hope you enjoy these ones if you make them. :)

Madron 2016

For Madron last Thursday I made a ginger beer cake. It was from a recipe that I'd had saved on my Pinterest Recipes To Make board for ages, lol. (Saved it a couple of years ago). Here's the link: http://thecakedcrusader.blogspot.com/2013/12/ginger-beer-cake-and-movember.html

The cake is plain but I wanted a topping so I used the cream cheese icing recipe from a James Martin cake that I made for Easter in 2013. (Just made the icing this time). You can find that recipe here: https://www.bbcgoodfood.com/recipes/10209/frosted-white-chocolate-easter-cake

It came out quite nice but I burnt it a bit, lol. Also it was a bit dry so I ate it with Carnation evaporated milk. The recipe uses alcoholic ginger beer but I don't drink the alcoholic type, so I just used my favourite Old Jamaica Ginger. The cream cheese icing went nicely with the ginger flavour. It was better than the gingerbread cakes I made last year and the year before. I think it was because it doesn't have treacle (molasses) in it; the treacle just makes it too heavy for me.*

Here are a couple of pics:

Happy Madron!

I don't normally post on a Thursday but since today is Madron (also known as Mabon) aka the Autumn Equinox, I thought I'd do an extra post to share a couple of related links. :)

Here's an article with some good info about Madron/Mabon: https://www.goddesslifestyleplan.com/mabon-autumnal-equinox/

Update 16/9/25: The link is now gone but here's another article: https://www.learnreligions.com/all-about-mabon-the-autumn-equinox-2562286 

And here's another one with some suggestions for things to do at Equinox time. (There's also the Spring Equinox so if you're in the Southern Hemisphere, this applies to you too): https://www.stellaseaspirit.co.za/things-to-do-at-equinox/

Update 9/9/24: Post redirects to this one about the equinoxes: https://www.stellaseaspirit.co.za/vernal-and-autumnal-equinoxes/

 

Today is the first official day of autumn and from now on the days will get noticably shorter. It's getting dark before 8pm now. It's really been feeling like autumn the past week or so but we're supposed to be getting a heatwave next week, lol. The picture above is I one I took at Hove Park at the beginning of the month. The leaves weren't turning yet but the atmosphere and light is different than during the summer.

Happy Madron and autumn! (Or Oestara and spring if you're celebrating those). :) I've decided to bake a ginger beer type cake, so I'm going to make that later. I'll share how it turned out and some pics soon. :)



Photo: Hove Park. Copyright Moonsparkle 2016.

Beach Pics

I recently went to Worthing Beach and took some pictures, so I thought I'd share a few here. :) Now we're in September and transitioning into autumn but we've been having some nice, hotter weather lately. Signs of autumn coming are the light becoming mellower and the days getting shorter (I think it's getting darker around 8pm now) but at the same time the weather is still good. I didn't have a chance to get to the beach all summer and I wanted to go before it got colder.

Here are the pics:

Lammas 2016

Last Monday (1st August) I celebrated Lammas. This year I made gingerbread again, using my favourite recipe from the brown sugar packet. I've finally got the new cooker installed now; I wanted it done in time for Lammas because I knew I wanted to make gingerbread!

I see that last year I put sprinkles on top. I didn't this time but I iced them as usual (I just make up some icing with icing sugar and water). The dough was a bit dry again but I added more milk. I made gingerbread men and a couple of round biscuits with the leftover dough. It was a bit trial and error getting used to the new oven but the gingerbread came out quite nice in the end. It wasn't so gingery as other times but I'd rather have less ginger than too much! lol. I added a bit of mixed spice too.

Here's a pic:

Chocolate Fudge

A couple of weeks ago I made some chocolate fudge. I wanted to get some condensed milk when I was at the supermarket and then I saw a recipe for the fudge on the back of the Carnation tin, so I thought I'd have  go at making some.

"Fudge" to me always seems like the traditional type with sugar, butter and milk but you can also make it with condensed milk, chocolate, butter and icing sugar which was the type I made. I did previously make some white chocolate fudge for Christmas (see below).

You can also add different ingredients to the traditional recipe. When I was a child I used to go the Roundstone Garden Centre (this was long before its makeover when it became Haskins Roundstone) and they did lovely fudge. They had flavours like strawberry and cream and mint. Their machine broke so they couldn't make any more, which was such a shame!

The fudge I made was Easy Chocolate Fudge and you can find the recipe on the Carnation website: https://www.carnation.co.uk/Recipes/64/Easy-Chocolate-Fudge

I wasn't bothered about the nuts, so I left them out. If you're from America, I think icing sugar is what you call powdered sugar. :) This is simple to make. It doesn't require any actual baking; you just put it in the fridge once you've made it. (I've categorised it under "baking" though because it's a sweet, baking type item).

It came out quite nice. Here's a pic: