Cobweb Muffins and Pumpkin Carving

It's Halloween tomorrow! Emma invited a bunch of us round for dinner and pumpkin carving, my idea of the ideal evening. I decided to bring something and found this recipe for cobweb muffins online and attempted to make them. I have to say, any baking with fancy decorating, although this isn't even very fancy, isn't really up my street. But I had a go and I have to say they were very tasty even if they didn't all turn out looking amazing (ignore that one at the back there).

So, how I made the muffins (on a side note, yes these are muffins and not cupcakes because of the melted butted element)

Ingredients 
For the muffins:
50g dark chocolate
85g salted butter
1 tablespoon milk
200g self-raising flour
1/2 teaspoon bicarb of soda
85g muscovado sugar
50g golden caster sugar
1 egg
145ml soured cream
For the topping:
100g dark chcocolate
100g white choclate

Ok, first preheat your oven to 180C and line a muffin tin with paper cases, I found these orange ones in the kitchen cupboard at home and was very proud of myself

Break up the chocolate and put it in a heatproof bowl with the butter and milk. Melt over a pan of water making sure the bowl and water don't touch.

 Next beat together the egg and soured cream. I used a freestanding mixer but you could easily use a bowl and spoon.

Measure the flour, sugars and bicarb into a separate bowl and then add to the egg mixture.

Add the melted ingredients and mix until... mixed but don't.. over mix (have I used the word mix too many times? No?)

Spoon into cases and bake for 15-20mins

To decorate, melt the dark and white chocolate in two separate heat proof bowl in the microwave.

Spoon one the dark chocolate to cover the muffin then drizzle the white chocolate in circles on top. Use a toothpick to drag lines across the circles to give a cobweb effect. Repeat with chocolate the other way around.

I was late arriving to Emma's because of the decorating so we got stuck in pretty quickly to the whole pumpkin carving thing.

And it descended into chaos pretty quickly...

Luckily everyone managed to get through without cutting themselves which I thought was a bit of a miracle!

I think its fair to say that we need some more practice!