Happy Halloween everyone!

While I continue in production mode prepping a spooky couples Halloween dinner for my Mister, I thought I'd share a favourite recipe.



Dry Ingredients:

• 2 cups whole wheat flour
• 1 cup unbleached flour
• 1 cup brown sugar
• 1 cup natural sugar
• 6 tbsp cocoa powder
• 2 tbsp instant coffee
• 2 tsp baking soda
• 1 tsp baking powder
• 1 tsp salt

Wet Ingredients:

• 2 cups unflavoured rice milk
• 3/4 cup unsweetened apple sauce
• 1/4 cup vegetable oil
• 2 tbsp vinegar
• 2 tsp vanilla bean paste

Directions:

1. Prep your baking dish (muffin tins, bundt pan etc) by greasing using vegan margarine or lining with non-stick parchment cups (but not regular liners).
2. In a large bowl, sift together dry ingredients making sure to break down any clumps of coffee, cocoa or brown sugar. In a separate bowl, mix together the wet ingredients. Add wet to dry and mix using a hand mixer. Don't mix together until you're ready to scoop/pour into your baking pan. The mixture will start to leaven right away and waiting too long will lead to a deflated chocolate batter.
3. Bake mini cupcakes for about ten minutes, full sized cupcakes for 18-20, and a bundt cake for about 40 minutes or until a toothpick/skewer comes out clean with a touch of crumble. As with most recipes, over or undercooking leads to sad baked goods. Also, as is my norm, I forget to note how long things take and could be wrong, so watch these things like babies!
4. Top with your favourite icing! I chose death-by-chocolate with a simple vegan chocolate buttercream and a sprinkling of cookie crumbs.

Then I played with toppers, like our free printables available here, and a simple ghosty made using a foam sticker.


This recipe is a new family favourite and a must-have for my vegan brother. Try it out! It's easy, delicious, and can be loved by herbivores and omnivores alike! Share the vegan love this Halloween!

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I am in big love with the traditional creepy Halloween this year. It's becoming problem, since it's really only one day out of the year and I only have so many excuses to throw myself into different designs.... It doesn't help that things like this awesome dessert table by Creations by Casey are popping up on my radar. I am smitten by those natural candy apples. Such a sweet detail!



Here's a closer look at the beautiful, perfect cake centrepiece:

Are you ready for Halloween??

I hope you are, because if you aren't, tough luck getting your supplies now that retail stores think it's Christmas in October. Luckily, here at Clementine we know it's not Christmas. Quite frankly, we're not ready to take Halloween out of the limelight yet. Its fifteen minutes aren't over.





To commemorate the wondrous Halloween season, and to stick it to "the man" who thinks its over already, we're giving away FREE party printables to top off, tag, or label your goodies this Halloween. Click here to get your Halloween Freebie!! One, two, FREE.


Aren't these cute?? You know you want 'em!  The little ghost is as shocked as we are that stores are packing up their Halloween gear.


NOTE: Always link to this post instead of uploading, re-posting or emailing anyone this freebie. If you'd like to feature this giveaway on your blog or webpage, please link back to my page. Same goes for sharing the file. Thanks!!




Love, Clementine

I love how Crafty my fellow Canadians are. I can't get enough! Last week I praised a set of adorable Hallowe'en cupcake toppers from Canadian Etsy seller KiwiTini Creations, and then proceeded to buy said cupcake toppers (oh, just you wait, I'm going to photo-shoot the heck outta those cuties). This week, I was led to another great Canadian via KiwiTini's Facebook page: Crafted by Lindy.




I love, love, love a well chosen colour scheme, and this shop pulls my heart strings. Crafted by Lindy has some adorable and unique Hallowe'en products for great prices. Check it out:

Buy me!

Buy me!

Buy me!

I love the simple yet fab designs. Such a great find! Make sure you take a look at Crafted by Lindy's store to check out the other designs. I bet you'll love the other holiday goodies, too.


Love, Clementine

Now that you've had your peek at the custom decor and bar-themeing of Part 1 of this party's post, feast your eyes on these tasty details.




Beer bottles were custom labelled for guests using the party's Axe Grinder Rockhouse logo. A special label was created just for the man himself, with a hilarious picture of him posing in his underwear. No, I won't be posting that one... much to everyone's dismay, I'm sure! Juices for the kiddies were labelled using an adorable picture of the birthday guy's youngest.. we called it Minor's Ale. Notice the rattles on the neck labels? Andrew couldn't resist playing that up.


 Midnight snacks, which I was too busy eating to take pictures of, included tons of classic bar appetizers: wings, dips, shrimp, nachos... the list goes on. I may have been the biggest fan of the food at that party. Maybe it was because I didn't have to make it I'd been working up an appetite on what I'm showing you next.


And without further ado, the hyper-detail-oriented dessert buffet, featuring especially clever rock-reference treats. If you're a classic metal or rock fan, you might catch on to a few of them! (Guitar shaped brownies are fairly obvious, however) Please, please, please take notice of the Ozzy bat pops. They're my favourite! The man of the hour is a huge chocoholic, so chocolate is all over this spread. Even the bat pie pops are filled with a chocolate filling! So tasty.


I loved the use of the Axe Grinde Rockhouse as the backdrop to this table. Andrew also made a personalized "through the decades" greatest hits collection encompassing the 70's, 80's, 90's and 00's using pictures of the birthday dude. I chose not to showcase these for privacy reasons, but you can see a little glimpse of them on the back wall. Trust me when I say they rocked!!!



The party started at 8pm, and a little birdie told me it ended somewhere around 10 hours later.... Wow!!

I had a ton of fun planning the details for this party, and the family was a blast to work with. Thanks for letting me be a part of such a special nght!!


Love, Clementine

I hope you're all having a lovely start to your Monday! I know I am. Why? Because I am sharing Part 1 of a pretty rockin' birthday bash.

{Please forgive my TERRIBLE censoring of faces and personal information in this post, there was a whole lotta personalization in this party and it was tough to strategically photograph around it}

This party was designed as an in-home rock-show-bar for all ages, a theme customized to the man of the hour's love of classic metal and rock. The house was decked out like a bar, complete with show posters, signage, drinks and backstage passes.There was even "staff" on hand acting as bouncers checking ID and stamping hands. Loving a good "costume", I spent the evening in a waitress apron and tight black "bartender" clothes and eighties-friendly boots. So much fun!






The table signage included the standard bar specials, with a special emphasis on Midnight ROCKtails. Love the wordplay!



The entire house, including the bathroom!, was plastered with show posters in rock-show-bar fashion. The birthday dude and his buds were even headliners in some of the posters! Having a multimedia and design guru on hand was a beautiful thing for this party, and Andrew did an awesome job (it helped that he love-love-LOVES metal and 80s rock)
 

The back of the bathroom doors were covered in kraft paper in lieu of a guest book. Markers were left for guests to leave their birthday wishes for the big guy.


Prop aviators were available, along with inflatable guitars, for guests to rock out in. The birthday guy was given an awesome ThinkGeek guitar shirt that really plays like a guitar and his own backstage pass with an added "YOU ROCK" tag.



Guests young and old loved the props when it came time to pose in the photo booth. {Again, excuse my face blurring}


What a rockstar!





I hope you're as excited to see these pics as I am. I love reliving these events! This is just a taste, too, so make sure you come back to see Part 2! There's so much more to share, and a lot of it involves my favourite thing... FOOD!




 Love, Clementine

Hello blogland. Some of you may have noticed a peculiar silence here on Clementine. My usual routine of million hour weeks finally caught up to me, and I "hit the wall" so to speak. I'm recovering, just needed some major rest time.




I'll be back in full swing sharing great celebration inspirations with you over the next little while, and am hoping to have my Etsy shop up and running before Christmas. In the meantime, check out this beauty in preparation for Halloween:

Buy me!

How awesome are those little cupcake brooms??? I don't even care how delicious the red velvet cupcake looks, I just want the toppers in my life. What's great is that the seller (Kiwi Tini Creations) is Canadian as well as clever. Guilt and duty free!! Check it out, it's a great shop!


Happy Thanksgiving Monday. Take better care of yourself than I do. :)

Love, Clementine