DIY Wedding: Personalised M&M Favours and Placecards

 

Traditionally at weddings, guests are given little packets of sugared almonds. Apparently there's a reason for this: almonds are slightly bitter but with the sugary coating, they represent the hope that married life will be more sweet than bitter. It's also traditional to give five almonds exactly, as the number five can't be divided so symbolises a strong bond between the couple.

Having said that, I've been to enough weddings where the sugared almonds get left behind - I'm not sure how many people actually like eating them. We weren't on a tight budget for our wedding but I didn't want to spend money on things that we didn't feel were worthwhile, so we considered not giving out wedding favours at all.

We also considered charity wedding favours, as we wanted to support the Young Epilepsy charity and I knew that some charities sell kits where you can make placecards for the table and each one has a little pin badge, like the pink ribbon breast cancer logo. At the time Young Epilepsy only had plastic wristbands and we weren't sure if they would be suitable so we decided instead to make a donation to Young Epilepsy which we put on our gift list and wedding website, as this would raise awareness and we could give more money this way.

I decided that I wanted to combine the guest placecard  with a little gift or wedding favour, and for it to be homemade, at least partly. I came across a website where you could personalise M&Ms and they had a 25% discount and when I explained to my fiancé, he loved the idea.

We could get M&Ms in our wedding colours, printed with pretty much whatever we wanted. We wanted to go for a cow theme so decided to have a little clipart cow printed on half the M&Ms and our names printed on the other. They can't print on black so we had white and purple (as the bridesmaids dresses were purple) and then separately went to the M&M World shop in Leicester Square (easy enough as we both work in London) to buy a big bag of black M&Ms. They have sweets in every colour imaginable and you can mix your own combination and we couldn't find anywhere online selling just black ones so my fiancé went and did it himself.

I bought clear plastic 'pillow' gift boxes for about £12 for 100 on Ebay, so we weighed the M&Ms and worked out how many we could have in each packet, and spent an evening filling the packets. We used my die cutting machine to cut out gift tags from purple card and my mother-in-law, who does beautiful calligraphy, kindly agreed to write the name of each guest on the label. I then took some purple ribbon, which I already had in my craft cupboard, and tied it around each M&M packet, attached the name label and used a pair of scissors to curl the ends.

 

 We bought the M&Ms as a bulk bag of 1.5kg which cost £85 before the 25% discount; you can also buy a bulk bag of 1.5kg and 100 pillow boxes for £105 but I don't think they offered this at the time and in any case it was cheaper to get the boxes from Ebay.  You can also buy plastic hearts which are £119 along with the 1.5kg of M&Ms and we might have considered this had they been available at the time. 

I costed them out and we made each one for about £1 which is really good - if you look at websites selling wedding favours you can easily pay £2-£3 for nice ones, which doesn't sound a lot but when you multiply that by 75 guests - we ended up spending around £75 rather than £225 which is good!

 Each packet was left on the dining table on each place setting so guests knew which was their seat. I think some people ate the M&Ms at the table and other people took them home - I hope they liked them, I think these were a bit quirky and fit really well with the theme of our wedding - if you want to read more about it, click here!

M&M chocolate birthday cake

 

When I made my fiancé this chocolate birthday cake from the Outsider Tart cookery book the quantities given were so large that it made three big layers. I didn't need the cake to be that big so I put one of the layers in the freezer, and used it a few weeks later when I wanted a cake to take into work.

The cake broke a little while it was defrosting but otherwise was absolutely fine - this is a really good cake that includes Coca-Cola in the mixture!

 

I made some chocolate buttercream which I spread on the top and around the side of the cake. It does look a bit messy at the moment, but that won't matter!

To decorate this cake I decided to use up some things I had in the cupboard. I wanted to use things up and I also didn't have much time - we'd gotten back from a weekend away in Wiltshire and I only had the evening to do it before work the next day, and as we'd been away all weekend I had a lot of other things I needed to do!
I had some white chocolate fingers left over from this anti-gravity Easter cake but not quite enough to go around the whole cake, and I couldn't find any more white ones in the supermarket. So I decided to alternate with some milk chocolate fingers which I thought actually made a nice pattern and looked really good.

I also had some M&Ms and larger peanut M&Ms I wanted to use up as they had been hanging around for a while. As they were different types I decided to use some chocolate fingers to mark out sections on top of the cake, but actually the colours all blend together and I probably didn't need to do this.

Finally I tied a ribbon around the cake, which helped to keep the chocolate fingers upright. I was really pleased with this given it was a last minute job using up cake and chocolate I already had in the house!

F is for fingers - chocolate fingers - so I'm sharing this cake with Alphabakes, the blog challenge I co-host with Ros of The More Than Occasional Baker.

As I used up things I already had in the house this was a very cost-efficient cake so I'm sharing it with Credit Crunch Munch, hosted by Michelle at Utterly Scrummy on behalf of Helen and Camilla.

Haunted Halloween Gingerbread House

Gingerbread houses are really cute, aren’t they – and actually a bit tricky to make, as it turns out!

 

For a few years now I’ve wondered about asking for a set of gingerbread house cutters for Christmas but then thought there was no point, as it’s something that people really make in the run-up to Christmas, not after. A few weeks ago my fiancé mentioned something about gingerbread and I explained why I’d never asked for one as a gift for the reason I’ve just explained, and we left it at that. Two days later a parcel from Lakeland turned up containing a gingerbread house kit! That was very sweet of him – one of the many reasons I’m marrying him J

 

He also had a great suggestion – that rather than just using the kit before Christmas, I make a haunted gingerbread house for Halloween. Of course, that way he gets more gingerbread, but I’m not complaining!

 

The Lakeland kit comes with instructions for making the gingerbread itself which was very easy to do. I was worried the mixture was a bit sticky but once I rolled it out on a floured board it was fine.

 

 

I cut the front and back of the house out first and they were so large I couldn’t get anything else on the baking tray, so I realised I was going to have to bake the gingerbread in batches.

 

Each piece only spread slightly when it came out of the oven and I used the cutters again after baking but while the gingerbread was still a little soft to cut off the excess again. I was worried that if I didn’t do this, the pieces wouldn’t fit together exactly. As it happened, they still didn’t fit together exactly! I don’t know how I ended up with such big gaps and whether it was down to the baking or the assembly. It held together and looked pretty much OK but there must be a knack to doing it perfectly!

 

Once I had left the house sections to cool, I made up some royal icing using egg whites according to the instructions on the house kit. It said to use 3 egg whites and 500g icing sugar which seemed a lot, so I used two egg whites, and was going to use two thirds of the icing sugar but ended up having to put in nearly another 100g of icing sugar to get it stiff enough. And it meant I had far more icing than I needed, so I suggest – since royal icing goes hard quite quickly – that you use 1 egg and reduce the other ingredients by a third and then make more if you need it.

 

 

I used a piping bag to apply the icing along the edges of the building sections. The assembly instructions were quite minimal and not that easy to follow – I have no idea how to stick the chimney onto the roof and could have worked it out I’m sure, but decided not to bother with the chimney! 

 

 
 

First you stick the walls to the cake board – I happened to have a black cake board in the cupboard which was perfect for Halloween – and then put the front and back on the house. Each time you have to leave it to set for about 20 minutes and use a cup or glass to keep the sides propped up. Finally we stuck on the roof – my sister was helping and I do think it’s easier with two people!

 

 

Once the house was set I added the doors and windows and decided to decorate the roof first. I had a packet of candy corn M&Ms and another of pumpkin spice M&Ms which I’d bought in America. Each packet didn’t quite have enough to cover the whole roof so I did one side one way and the other side another. I think the white, orange and yellow looks more like Thanksgiving colours than Halloween but never mind.

I made some ghosts out of giant marshmallows and black food colouring and made a path out the front from more M&Ms.

 

I had some Haribo Halloween sweets which I used to decorate the front of the house – you can’t see too well but they are ghosts, spiders and witches heads. I wasn’t sure that I liked the overall effect but wasn’t sure how else to decorate it – I think this would be good for kids but if you want a more professional look I wouldn’t use the gummy sweets. I have an idea for how to decorate the gingerbread house at Christmas which I think will be smarter so you will have to wait and see!

For my first ever gingerbread house I don't think this was bad at all, and it certainly tasted good!

I'm sending this to the Food Year Linkup, hosted by Charlotte's Lively Kitchen, as it's Halloween!

 

Halloween Candy Corn Rocky Road

Candy Corn is popular in the US at Halloween, but most of the British people I asked had never heard of it. I think I've only come across it because I've been to the States in September a couple of times and the shops are full of candy corn in the run up to Halloween. Candy Corn looks like mini ears of corn and is orange and yellow coloured, made from corn syrup.

My boyfriend's mum went to America in September and brought me back a huge haul of candy and chocolates, including these candy corn M&Ms and a giant packet of candy corn marshmallows. I wanted to use them in baking and one good way to use marshmallows that sprang to mind is rocky road. Normally rocky road uses broken biscuits but I decided the hard candy casing of the M&Ms would give a similar crunch. I used milk chocolate for this as that was all I had, but it was very sweet so I would recommend using plain chocolate instead.

I based my recipe on Nigella's Rocky Road.

You need:
125g butter, softened
300g plain chocolate
3 tbsp. golden syrup
200g candy corn M&Ms, or similar, or broken up biscuits
100g marshmallows

Melt the butter and chocolate in a small pan then stir in the golden syrup and heat gently. Remove about half a cup of the mixture and set aside.

Stir in the M&Ms or biscuits and the marshmallows - chopped with scissors if large.

Line a 9 inch square tin with baking paper and pour in the chocolate mixture. Pour the reserved chocolate mixture over the top and spread roughly.

Chill in the fridge until set which will take at least two hours. When set, slice into squares.

My boyfriend was a very big fan of this but as mentioned I used milk chocolate and found it too sweet to eat more than a tiny bit at a time, which was probably a good thing!

                                                                                             
 I am sending this to Cook Blog Share, hosted by Lucy at SuperGoldenBakes, to share this recipe with other bloggers.

I am also sharing this with Let's Cook for Halloween, hosted by Simply Food.

These rocky road squares cookies are also perfect for the Treat Petite challenge, hosted by Kat at Baking Explorer and Stuart at Cakeyboi, as the theme is trick or treat.

I think these also fit the theme of comfort food, so I'm sending these to the Biscuit Barrel challenge, hosted by Laura at I'd Much Rather Bake Than.

Halloween is the theme for We Should Cocoa, so I am sending this to Hannah at Honey and Dough, who is hosting the challenge on behalf of Choclette at Chocolate Log Blog.

Pumpkin Spice M&M Halloween Cookies

 

 

Halloween candy is much more prevalent in the US and I received quite a haul of it when my boyfriend’s mum visited the States last month. I didn’t want to just eat the chocolates and sweets and prefer instead to bake with it (though we did already demolish a bag of caramel Hershey’s Kisses!). That has left me needing to do a lot of baking in the run-up to Halloween however!

 

After the success of my Reese’s Pieces cookies I decided to make something similar using these pumpkin spice flavour M&Ms.

 

 

 

They are not strongly flavoured and without reading the packet I wouldn’t have been able to tell the taste was pumpkin – so I decided to boost the flavour of the cookies with some extra canned pumpkin. I found this in the American foods aisle of my local (small) Tesco; you can use it as a pumpkin pie filling or for all sorts of other things.

 

 

 

The cookies are very simple to make, and since I used my American measuring cups I didn’t even need to find a recipe.

 

Makes 10-12 cookies

You need:

1 cup butter, softened

1 cup soft brown sugar

1 egg

1 cup plain flour

1/2 tsp ground nutmeg

3 tbsp canned pumpkin puree

½ cup pumpkin spice flavour M&Ms

 

Preheat oven to 175C.

 

Mix the butter, sugar and egg in a bowl then fold in the flour and nutmeg. Mix in the canned pumpkin then stir in the M&Ms.

 

 

  

Line two baking sheets with greaseproof paper and place a heaped tablespoon of the mixture on the sheet per cookie. Press down a little to flatten the cookie. In retrospect I would flatten these quite a lot as mine didn't look all that much like cookies!

 

 

 

Bake in the preheated oven for 10 minutes then allow to cool.

 

 

These cookies were delicious – quite soft with a melt in the mouth texture. The M&Ms are like little hidden surprises, though the overall flavour of the pumpkin in the cookie wasn’t strong at all. Which might be a good thing as I’m not sure how I feel about cookies that taste too much of pumpkin!

 

 

I am sending this to Cook Blog Share, hosted by Lucy at SuperGoldenBakes, to share this recipe with other bloggers.

 

 

I am also sharing this with Let's Cook for Halloween, hosted by Simply Food.

 

 

These cookies are also perfect for the Treat Petite challenge, hosted by Kat at Baking Explorer and Stuart at Cakeyboi, as the theme is trick or treat.

To me, biscuits and cookies are comfort food, so I'm sending these to the Biscuit Barrel challenge, hosted by Laura at I'd Much Rather Bake Than.

The theme for this month's Tea Time Treats is cooking or baking with vegetables, and since there is pumpkin in these cookies I'm sharing this with Karen at Lavender and Lovage and Jane at The Hedgecombers.

 

Halloween is the theme for We Should Cocoa, but the recipe also needs to involve chocolate. Luckily these pumpkin spice M&Ms are chocolate! So I am sending this to Hannah at Honey and Dough, who is hosting the challenge on behalf of Choclette at Chocolate Log Blog.