Cook with the Kids this Halloween

Happy half term for those like me who have the children at home this week after a short and unnerving first term back since lockdown.

Halloween this year is not the same as previous years, we won’t be going to any fun fancy dress parties with friends, we won’t be hosting a spooky dinner for family with the girls in their witches outfits and trick or treating has been regarded as ‘off limits’ too.

Like many others, I’m sick and tired of focusing on the negatives of the situation so instead will be concentrating on the things we can do instead. We can still dress up at home, we can Facetime the family in our Halloween get-ups and take pictures to remember. We can watch some age appropriate scary films – we already have The Adams Family and Corpse Bride under our belt this weekend – any suggestions welcome? And we can do something which we always do, bake and make in the kitchen an array of spooky delights. If you fancy joining in why not try any of the below 9 suggestions.

Halloween Mummy and Spider Cookies

These Halloween Mummy and Spider Cookies use my standard cookie mixture but are decorated to look like monstrous mummies and spooky spiders – they’re fun to make, taste great and look cool too.

Halloween Mummy and Spider Cookies

Halloween Chocolate Bark

This Halloween Chocolate Bark is so simple but super fun to make with the children and once set and cut into shards, can be placed into cellophane bags and given out as a Halloween gift to family and friends too. Also it’s delicious!

Halloween Chocolate Bark

Halloween Chocolate Bark Shards

Halloween Ghost Cupcakes

These Halloween Ghost Cupcakes are just a simple fairy cake (homemade or shop bought) topped with some orange frosting (mine was from B&M) a large marshmallow on each and some Royal Icing cut into circles and some eyes and a mouth added with icing pens.

Halloween Ghost Cupcakes

Pumpkin Mac ‘n’ Cheese

A family favourite dish- this Pumpkin Mac ‘n’ Cheese is greatly improved and made a little more balanced with the addition of sweet, roasted pumpkin – a great lunch of dinner for during half term and especially if you have an abundance of pumpkins from the pumpkin patch!

Pumpkin Mac 'n' Cheese

Monster Burgers

This makes for a really fun meal for the kids.

Either make your own burger patties (here’s my steak ones) or buy some from the butchers or supermarket.

Then all you need is some burger buns, olives (for the eyes), sliced Cheddar or Red Leicester which you need to cut into zig zigs for teeth and melt over the cooked burger, some gherkin slices to poke out the front as a big monster tongue and whatever else you love in a burger – lettuce, tomato, sliced red onions and some BBQ sauce in our case! I served with my Healthy Slaw and chips and it went down a treat.

Monster Burgers

Spooky Spider Cookies

Use Oreo cookies, some melted chocolate, mini marshmallows and some lip sweets for make these cute Spooky Spider Cookies.

Spooky Spider Cookies

Mummified Sausage Plait Monster

I made this in the week and Bridget and Beatrice absolutely loved it. It is simple a square of shop-bought puff pastry topped with a 375g pack of sausage meat, flattened right out, and seasoned with a little black pepper. Then take a sharp knife and cut ‘bandages’ out of the edges of the pastry – long, thin slithers. Then simply wrap the ‘bandages’ across the sausage meat, until it’s completely covered up and the pastry has all been used up. Brush all over with beaten egg and place into a hot (200 degree) oven for 35 minutes or until the pastry is golden brown.

Make into the monster by adding a couple of olives on cocktail sticks as eyes, a cornichon as a nose (could be a cut out piece of pepper), some tortilla chips as hair and some zig-zag cut out hard cheese (I used Red Leicester) as pointy teeth.

Here’s how I served it for the girls this week as a quick working-night dinner.

Mummified Sausage Plait Monster

Mummified Sausage Rolls

If you’d rather make smaller scale Sausage Rolls these are absolutely perfect and super easy – an idea I’ve made lots of times since having children and taken from BBC Good Food.

Mummified Sausage Rolls

Halloween Chocolate Cupcakes

These Halloween Chocolate Cupcakes are fun to make and the chocolate ganache makes for a more grown-up appealing taste too whilst the spider and icing topped ones will be fab for the kiddies.

Halloween Chocolate Cupcakes

Halloween Mummy and Spider Cookies

These Halloween Mummy and Spider Cookies use my standard cookie mixture - it's tried and tested and works every time. 

These are fun to make with the children and the below will make about 21-22 cookies, so if you're like me you can leave a batch for the kids to decorate while you do the rest and not worry about the mess. 

They taste great, look great and are just a good activity to do with the children around Halloween.

Halloween Mummy and Spider Cookies

Here's how:

• 150g salted butter, room temperature
• 85g light brown sugar
• 85g granulated sugar
• 1 egg
• 2 tsp vanilla extract
• 1 tsp baking powder
• 225g plain flour
• 100g milk chocolate chips
• 100g white chocolate chips 
• 1 tbsp milk (may not need)

To decorate Mummy Cookies:

• 150g white chocolate
• Edible candy eyes

To decorate Spider Cookies:

• 6-8 giant chocolate buttons
• Edible candy eyes
• Red icing pen

Pre-heat the oven to 200 degrees and line 3 baking trays with greaseproof paper. 

In a large mixing bowl, place the weighed out butter and the brown and white sugar and cream together with a wooden spoon. Mix it well until it's completely combined. 

Now crack in 1 egg and add the vanilla extract and mix in, then add the plain flour and baking powder and mix until the batter resembles cookie dough and has some movement still to it. If it's a bit too thick add a drop of milk at a time and stir until you're happy with the texture. 

Now add the chocolate chips - I always struggle to find white chocolate chips so instead but a 100g bar and chop into chunks. Mix them in well.

Use a teaspoon at a time to place a ball of the cookie dough onto the tray - there's no need to press down, this will happen naturally in the oven. Leave plenty of space between the cookies - I only put 5-6 on each tray and do batches in the oven. 

Bake for exactly 9 minutes and starting to brown. Remove from the oven and leave to cool for 2-3 minutes in the tray before carefully using a fish slice to remove from the trays and place gently on a wire cooling rack or board to cool. 

Repeat the process until all of the cookies are baked. 

The Spider Cookies:

With the cookies that have just come out of the oven and are piping hot, place a giant chocolate button onto each and gently press down and leave to melt a little. Once this has happened use a cocktail stick or something similar to use the melted chocolate and draw 8 little legs using the melted chocolate. Pop a pair of edible eyes on and draw on a smile with a red icing pen and leave to cool.

Halloween Spider Cookies

The Mummy Cookies:

Break up the white chocolate and place into a heat-proof bowl and place over some just boiled water in a pan on a low heat. Use a wooden spoon to mix the chocolate until it is runny and fully melted. 

Place the cookies onto a chopping board or one of the baking trays with the greaseproof paper to prevent lots of mess. Now take a spoonful of melted white chocolate and simply drizzle over each cookie to resemble the bandages of a mummy. Place the edible onto the cookies, using the melted chocolate as a glue and leave to cool.

Halloween Mummy Cookies

Below are a few more Halloween ideas to make with children:

• Halloween Ghost Cupcakes
• Halloween Chocolate Bark
• Pumpkin Mac 'N' Cheese
• Halloween Chocolate Cupcakes
• Spooky Halloween Chocolate Spider Cookies
• Halloween Mummified Sausage Rolls

Halloween Ghost Cupcakes

These are really easy to make and if you want a super quick fix you could even buy some ready made fairy cakes and simply decorate with the kids, but we do like to make ours. 

My two girls absolutely loved making these - they're really fun and are a great little activity to do during half term in the lead up to Halloween.

Halloween Ghost Cakes

Here's how:

For the cakes:

• 110g caster sugar
• 110g self raising flour
• 110g butter (softened/room temperature)
• 2 eggs
• 1 tsp baking powder
• 1/2 tsp vanilla extract

To decorate:

• Ready made orange or black Halloween icing/frosting (I bought ours in B&M)
• 1 sheet ready rolled Royal Icing
• 12 large marshmallows
• 1 black icing pen and 1 red, orange or pink (for the mouths)

Firstly pre-heat the oven to 200 degrees and line a cupcake tin with 12 cake cases - we used some leftover Halloween ones from last year which I picked up in Poundland no less.

Use the all-in-one method for the cakes, which means add all of the ingredients (self raising flour, caster sugar, butter, eggs, baking powder and vanilla extract) into a large mixing bowl and mix with a wooden spoon well until you have a good, combined cake batter.

Now spoon equal amounts into the cake cases, we use the two teaspoon method (spoon with one teaspoon and scrape down into the case with the other). 

Place into the oven for 15 minutes or until risen and golden brown then remove from the oven and allow to cool for 20-30 minutes on a wire rack.

To decorate, add a tablespoon of the ready made icing/frosting to each cupcake then use a palette knife to spread all over the top of the cake, into the edges of the case. 

Now place a marshmallow on top longways (the longest side should be flat to the cake) in the middle of the cake to make the body of the cake.

Now take out the Royal Icing Sheet (if you can't get a sheet, but a block and cut a third off and roll out, and wrap up the remaining Royal Icing which should keep for up to a month). Use a round cookie cutter to cut out x12 rounds big enough to go over the marshmallow with a little to spare. 

Place each icing round on top of the marshmallow and use your hands to pinch it down to the cake icing and form a ghostly appearance. 

Once all of the 'ghosts' are formed you can pipe or ice on the eye dots and a little line for the mouths. Enjoy!

If you fancy making more Halloween treats with the children here are a few other ideas:

• Halloween Chocolate Bark
• Mummified Sausage Rolls
• Spooky Halloween Chocolate Spider Biscuits
• Halloween Chocolate Cupcakes
• Halloween Biscuits

Halloween Chocolate Bark

This is hardly a recipe - just a good idea for a half term activity with the children with a spooky Halloween theme.

You can use absolutely any sweeties or other items, such as biscuits, pretzels or chocolate buttons, but the jelly sweets look and taste great. 

Halloween Chocolate  Bark

Here's how:

• 400g Milk chocolate (if making for adults, dark chocolate is nice too)
• Selection of Halloween jelly sweets (we had bones, brains, eyeballs, fingers and thumbs!)
• Selection of Halloween or chocolate sprinkles (we used both)
• Selection of chocolate treats (we used Orange Smarties and the Lidl version of M&M's)

Fill and boil a kettle then half fill a small saucepan and place on a low heat.

Break up the milk chocolate and place into a heat-proof bowl and place above the boiling water and allow to melt. Use a wooden spoon to help the chocolate to break down and stir.

Line a baking tray with greaseproof paper and once fully melted pour the chocolate into the tray and move the tray around to evenly distribute the oozing chocolate.

Now simply place the sweet treats you have all around. My kids absolutely loved doing this bit and you can imagine how many sweets didn't make it to the bark! 

Once complete, leave to cool completely on the kitchen side and once cold, place into the fridge for at least an hour to set. 

Now remove from the tray, place onto a chopping board and cut with a sharp knife into shards of bark. Enjoy!

Pumpkin Mac 'n' Cheese

This a lovely autumnal dish, that is ideal for this week when households are awash with Halloween pumpkins and squash. Rather than throw them out, it’s great to cook with pumpkins – they are packed with tons of vitamins and most importantly, it tastes great.

Mac n cheese is a family favourite - rich, oozing, delicious cheesy pasta with the addition of sweet roasted pumpkin only improves it further.  

If you'd rather make without the pumpkin - just follow the recipe below and omit the instructions re pumpkins. I roast the pumpkin whole and then cut it when softened to remove the hard work, as it can be tricky to chop raw. 

Pumpkin Mac and Cheese

The below serves 6.

Here’s how:

• 1 large squash or pumpkin
• 400g macaroni
• 1.5 tbsp plain flour
• 1.5 tbsp butter
• 1 tsp mustard powder
• 250ml full fat milk
• 2 bay leaves
• 55g Cheddar
• 30g Red Leicester
• 10g Grana Padana
• Nutmeg
• Pinch salt
• Pinch black pepper 
• Firstly place the oven on high at 200 degrees, pop the squash on a baking tray and place in the centre to roast for 30 minutes. 

Fill and boil the kettle.

Now in a pan, melt the butter gently, once fully melted add the flour and mustard powder and use a wooden spoon to quickly mix all together and form a roux. Once all combined add the milk, slowly, a little bit at a time, wach time quickly stirring to combine the roux and form the basis of the sauce. Add the bay leaves here to flavour and season and allow to cook on a low heat for a couple of minutes.

Grate all of the cheeses and leave a small handful aside for the topping, and add the rest to the roux, again stirring all the time. The cheese will melt down and thicken the sauce. Now grate in lots of nutmeg, it's difficult to give an exact measurement, but I like to add quite a bit, probably around a quarter of the nutmeg, it gives a lovely warming flavour.

Now cook the macaroni for 7 minutes in the boiled water with another pinch of salt, then drain and add to the cheese sauce and remove from the heat. Stir to ensure the pasta is all coated gloriously in the cheese sauce.

Now remove the squash from the oven and cut in half, then remove the seeds and anything inedible. Scoop out the flesh and place into a saucepan. Once all is out, roughly mash with a potato masher and then stir through the mac and cheese.

Pour the cheesy pasta into a dish and then scatter over the remaining cheese and place into the oven for thirty minutes or until the cheese is oozing and beginning to brown.

Portion up and if serving to children, allow to cool for a few minutes, so they don't burn their mouths. Enjoy!

A couple of other pumpkin recipes:

Pumpkin & Spinach Lasagne
Simple & Skinny Butternut Squash Soup

Cooking with Kids: Spooky Halloween Chocolate Spider Biscuits

This is a really fun, quick and easy way of getting the kids involved in making some Halloween treats at home.

I use Oreo’s as they’re sturdier than single-layer biscuits, but you could adapt this to whatever round biscuits you have in the house. I also use liquorice sticks as the spider legs, but this could just as easily be cola laces. Equally for eyes, I’ve used mini marshmallows with a little dot of melted chocolate, and for the lips some red jelly lips, but these could both be icing pens otherwise. I serve on a bed of spooky sweets, white chocolate mice, jelly snakes etc.

The below makes 8 spiders.

Here’s how:

• 1 pack original Oreo's
• 200g milk chocolate
• Pack of liquorice sticks
• 16 mini marshmallows
• Red jelly lips sweets 

Firstly cut the liquorice sticks down to quarter size, ensuring you have enough for 8 little legs, per spider - you’ll have 8 in total as a normal pack has 16 biscuits. Set aside.

Place a sheet of baking paper on the side to capture any mess of the assembly of the spiders.

Break up the chocolate into a china bowl and melt over a pan of recently boiled water. Use a wooden spoon to move the chocolate around and encourage it to melt.

Now you need to work fairly quickly at this point. Once fully melted, use a pastry brush to cover one side of 8 of the cookies with the melted chocolate. Bow rearrange the eight spider legs accordingly so they are dangling down, and one part is just pressed down into the soft, melted chocolate; this will act as your glue. Now, take one of the other Oreo's (the ones that were set aside and haven’t had chocolate on them) directly on top of the chocolate coating and legs and press down firmly.

Now brush on some more chocolate on top if the spiders ‘faces’ and assemble the faces. Position the two marshmallow eyes accordingly and press down so they stick into the chocolate, and then do the same with the sweetie lips.

Finally use a skewer or a coctail stick, dip the end into the remaining melted chocolate and touch the middle of the marshmallow eyes for pupils.

Leave to set for half hour then arrange onto spooky sweets, or however you are serving. Enjoy!

Some other ideas for keeping the kids occupied with a Halloween theme can be found below:


Making Mummified Sausage Rolls
Making these simple Chocolate Halloween Iced Biscuits
Make Halloween cards

Easy Chocolate Halloween Biscuits - Cooking with Kids

These biscuits are super simple to make, a fun activity for half term next week in the lead up to Halloween or for any spooky gathering. 

I grabbed a pack of cookie cutters from Poundstretchers which had shapes such as bats, Frankenstein's Monster faces, gravestones, pumpkins and cats, but you could apple the same method to any biscuit. If you only have round cooking cutters, just ice and then write 'RIP' on them or grab some of the Haribo sweeties like I have in the pictures with things such as spiders, bones, skeletons and the like and apply them. The main thing is that this is a really fun thing to do for Halloween with the children.

Bridget absolutely loves cooking and particularly baking anything sweet - this was the first time Beatrice (8 months) got involved in baking too, and enjoyed a little mix with the big spoon plus trying to scoop out the raw biscuit mixture! 

Easy Chocolate Halloween Biscuits

Here's how:

• 125g butter
• 110g caster sugar
• 250g plain flour
• 1 tsp vanilla extract
• 2 tbsp cocoa powder
• 1 egg
• 1 tbsp milk
• Flour to dust the worktop and rolling pin

To ice:

• 3 tbsp icing sugar
• Few drops of water
• Food colouring (I just used red to make orange for the pumpkins)
• Red icing pen
• Selection of spooky sweeties (I used Haribo)

Pre-heat the oven to 180 degrees, then grease and line the baking trays with parchment paper and set aside.

In a large bowl, beat the egg, butter and sugar together with the vanilla extract until combined. Slowly sift in the flour and cocoa, stirring through as you go. Add the milk if the mixture is a little dry. Once satisfied with the dough, cover with cling film and place into the fridge for 20-30 minutes.

Remove biscuit dough from the fridge. Lightly dust your worktop space with flour, and rub flour up and down your rolling pin, then use your hands to pull off a small section at a time, and roll out into a thin dough, about 1cm thick. If it's too thin, it'll be very difficult to handle, unless your a very deft baker!

Now use your cookie cutter, to cut out the shapes that you wish to use, and place each shape onto the baking shape. They can be placed close together, but not touching. They shouldn't expand too much in the oven.

Repeat the process until all the dough has been used and the shapes placed onto the baking sheets. Now place into the hot oven and bake for 12-15 minutes. Remove from the oven and allow to completely cool on the baking sheets before moving.

To ice, you can do so however you wish, and decorate in any manner, we used jelly lips, teeth and fangs for the mouths of the bats and Frankensteins, raisins for eyes, I cut up a dried apricot for the ghost mouths, and once iced, we used spiders, bones and skeleton jellies to make the biscuits as spooky as possible. We wrote RIP on the gravestones in a red icing pen.

To make up relevant icing, you want it quite thick, so take 3 tbsp icing sugar, and just a drop or two of cold water, and stir through, you want it runny enough to pour or brush onto the biscuits, but thick enough to not set 'watery' or opaque. We just used simple plain icing sugar for most of the icing, then added a little drop of red food colouring to make an orange hued icing for the pumpkins. 

Experiment though, and most importantly let the kids enjoy this activity - it doesn't matter if the biscuits are the most beautifully decorated, it only matters that you all enjoyed making them together!

Beatrice's first baking experience

If you're having a Halloween get together or tea party, or just doing a fun and spooky dinner for the kids on 31st October, these easy peasy Mummified Sausage Rolls are a winner too.

Halloween Mumified Sausage Rolls

I copied the idea from BBC Good Food but used ready rolled puff pastry instead of croissant pastry and these went down well at a mini Halloween gathering I held on Saturday evening.

The are a really fun, festive Halloween inspired snack sure to get everyone in the spooky mood and are super simple to make.

Mummified Sausage Rolls for Halloween



Here's how:

• 12 chipolatas 
• 1 sheet ready rolled Puff Pastry (I use Jus Rol)
• 1 egg
• 1 tsp English mustard

 

 Firstly pre-heat the oven to 180 and line a baking sheet with some greaseproof paper and set aside. 

 

Place a frying pan on a medium heat and fry off the sausages for 6-7 minutes, to sear all the way over.

 

 Leave the sausages to cool for fifteen-twenty minutes.

 

Now roll the puff pastry out onto the paper its wrapped in, and cut into 12 rectangles - three straight lines down, long-ways, and three across should do it. 

 

Now take each sausage and place into the centre of one of the pastry rectangles, with at least 1cm hanging off the edge, for the Mummy's face.

 

Now use a knife and make incisions all the way along the edges, both sides, to make the 'bandages'. And then 'wrap' each one over the sausage, one side at a time, to look like a bandage and once wrapped place onto the baking sheet.

 

Repeat for each sausage, and then beat an egg and brush over the pastry coat of each, then place into the oven for 20-25 minutes until the pastry is golden brown and well risen.

 

Leave to cool for ten minutes before serving and before doing so, use a skewer dipped into the mustard to place tiny eyes onto each sausage. Enjoy!

Family Activities: Making Halloween Cards

Children and toddlers absolutely love anything that involves any arts and crafts and for younger ones, like my daughter Bridget who has just turned two, it's an excellent way of helping them tune their fine motor skills - not to mention keeping them entertained for a while; perfect during half term if your kids are now climbing the walls. It’s just a great family activity.

With Halloween coming up on Monday, I spent some time with Bridget making spooky cards for all the family using a bunch of different items and encouraging her to get messy and have some fun.

We recently bought the Step2 Flip & Doodle Desk for Bridget's birthday, which is a desk with easel and drawers and compartments for all different arts and crafts and it has been such a great investment. We've already had hours of fun with it and I know come the colder, winter months when I'm very heavily pregnant or at home with the new baby, this is going to be invaluable.

Some simple Halloween crafting needn't be an expensive ask either, the only thing we bought were some spooky stickers from a pound shop - everything else we had in supply; and we even used an apple to help us print some paint-pumpkins. 

Homemade Halloween Cards

Halloween Crafting

Things you might need:

· Orange tissue paper

· Coloured card

· PVA Glue

· Some googly eyes

· Pipe cleaners

· Pompoms

· An apple

· Some yellow and red paint (or orange if you have some)

· Sticky backed letters

· Spooky Halloween stickers (can pick up in pound shops, supermarkets or Hobbycraft)


We made eight cards - simply folding 8 pieces of coloured card in half - plus a few paper artworks to practise on first and we did half with the paint pumpkins and half with tissue paper pumpkins (to allow the paint to dry sufficiently).

For the paint pumpkins I cut the apple in half and used a paring knife to make a small incision into the top, and then inserted a lollipop stick, to act as a handle. We didn't have any orange paint, so I encouraged Bridget to mix some red and yellow Crayola paint together in a bowl with a paint brush until we had the desired colour, which she seemed to enjoy. We then dipped the apple fully into the paint and then placed onto the card or paper to make a delightful pumpkin print. Just do half and then set aside to dry fully. Luckily we had a sunny day so left on the window sill and they were dry in a couple of hours.

Using some orange hued tissue paper, purchased in a large pack of ten coloured sheets from Asda (only £1.00) as part of the art supplies, we ripped up small pieces then scrunched them into little balls. I drew, with pencil, a small circle for Bridget on the cards, and then she used some PVA glue with a paint brush and painted the circle, then attached the tissue paper to appear like a pumpkin.

We then used either some cut green pipe cleaner or small green fluffy pom poms to stick on top as the stalk, as well as some colouring with Crayola Washable Markers and plenty of sticker fun. We used the letters to write ‘Happy Halloween’ on a couple of them, obviously I handed Bridget each sticker and told her where to stick those ones for the spelling of the words, but they are lovely and higgledy piggledy, which I think makes them all the more fun.

Once the paint was dry we added googly eyes and plenty more stickers and colouring in – lots of fun.

Bridget and I really enjoyed this quality time together and she was super proud handing them out to her Nanny and Grandad’s too – we’ll definitely be getting some Christmas crafting bits and pieces in the next few weeks ready for the next festive season J

Pumpkin and Spinach Lasagne

Having a bit of a haul from our Pumpkin Picking on Sunday, I created this vegetarian Pumpkin and Spinach Lasagne on Monday – another Meat Free Monday option added to the repertoire.

I must admit, usually I would make my own béchamel or white sauce for lasagne, but as I had a sick boyfriend at home and our toddler to run around after and was batch cooking for the week, I took a cheat here and used the Dolmio Lasagne Sauce – which actually is pretty decent and I wouldn’t hesitate to use again as a shortcut. I’m not one for processed sauces, but sometimes the need for speed overtakes and the pressures of family and working life intervene.

This was a family dinner favourite – anything involving pasta always is with my daughter and Glen; Glen’s slightly harder to please with our meat-free options, but this went down well and we all agreed we’d have it again.

I thought I’d share this in honour of Pumpkin Day this Saturday in the lead up to Halloween.

Here’s how:

1 small roasted pumpkin (can use butternut squash)
1 tbsp olive oil
1 white onion
1 clove garlic
1 tin chopped tomatoes
1 tbsp tomato puree
1 tsp dried oregano
½ tsp paprika
1 pack washed spinach
Lasagne sheets
1 jar Dolmio Lasagne White Sauce
50g grated Cheddar cheese
1 whole nutmeg
Salt & Pepper

Firstly pre-heat the oven to 180 degrees.

Roast the pumpkin until slightly softened. Allow the pumpkin to cool, then peel, and chop the flesh into long slice, discarding the pith and seeds inside (unless you’re using the pumpkin seeds for roasting and snacking on). Set aside.

To make the tomato sauce, add the olive oil to a pan on a low heat. Peel and dice the onion and mince the garlic and add to sauté slowly in the olive oil on a gentle heat.

Once slightly softened, add the tomatoes (could use passata), tomato puree, oregano, paprika and a pinch each of sea salt and black pepper to season. Add a couple of tablespoons of water and allow to cook for at least 30 minutes, or longer if you have it.

Once you’re happy with the sauce, remove from the heat and you’re ready to assemble the lasagne.

Firstly lay a layer of pumpkin at the bottom of an oven proof dish. Then spoon over a generous amount of the tomato sauce (you’ll need two layers so use about half). 

Next place the lasagne sheets over the top – don’t layer these on top of each other or they become a bit yucky in cooking.

Now pour over the Dolmio White Sauce to cover the sheets sufficiently. Now grate the nutmeg over really generously – this gives a really lovely warming flavour and really complements the dish, so be super generous.

Scatter over a really generous amount of spinach leaves – only one layer is spinach and it wilts quickly so add more, rather than less. 

Now repeat the process of adding the pumpkin, topped with tomato sauce then the lasagne sheets and white sauce.

Once again, grate over a really generous amount of nutmeg over the top with salt and black pepper and finish with the Cheddar before placing into the oven.

Cook for 35-40 minutes or until the topping is golden brown and bubbling away. Serve with a handful of green salad leaves, such as watercress or rocket. Enjoy! 

Pumpkin Picking at The Pumpkin Patch, Basildon, Essex

On Sunday, Glen, Bridget and I enjoyed a lovely hour of pumpkin-picking at The Pumpkin Patch, Foxes Farm in Basildon, Essex as a family weekend activity in the lead-up to Halloween next week.

The Pumpkin Patch, Foxes Farm

Despite it being bitingly cold, we wrapped ourselves up with layers and Bridget really enjoyed choosing our three pumpkins to bring home – with the intention of cooking with and some Halloween-inspired decorating.

A huge field jam-packed with piles and piles of pumpkins plus a few more ad hoc ones, dotted around – of every perceivable colour and size – it truly was a sight to behold and the sheer level of people taking advantage of the Pumpkin Patch was impressive too.

There was also ‘spooky’ sweetcorn to be picked, as this is one of Bridget’s favourite things to eat, we loved taking her around and showing her that the corn grows from the ground – such a lovely, fun and educational activity to do with children of all ages.

There was a walking trail amongst the corn rows, but we’d gotten just a little too cold by then, so didn’t take advantage of it this time. 

If you have older children too, there are some big hay stacks dotted around for climbing and photo opportunity fun, plus some even more fun and games – pumpkin bowling and pumpkin noughts and crosses which I thought was a really fun, cute activity. 

Proud of her pumpkin

It’s free entry to the Pumpkin Patch – you just pay for the pumpkins you want to take away with you, ranging from anything from £1.00 to £9.00 depending on the size, so it’s a lovely cheap pursuit for families. It’s open throughout half term this week too and is just a couple of minute’s’ drive from Barleylands – where you have the farm, a few retail outlets and the lovely Tiptree Tea Room where I can thoroughly recommend a scone and a warming cup of tea.

Daddy and Bridget enjoying the haystack

Bumpkin - Pumpkin hiding my bump

The Pumpkin Patch can be found just off the A12 on Wash Road, Noak Bridge, Basildon, Essex, SS15 4BP.

Enjoy!