Happy Halloween

I had a Halloween/fall dinner party with the family and friends yesterday. As I type this, it is Halloween, and I hope everyone is having a wonderful time! Don't eat too much candy :) I made these devils food chocolate cupcakes with Swiss butter cream frosting for dessert. Of course I'm showing you dessert first! I used Martha's new cupcake book, and had lots of fun making the Swiss butter cream frosting. It is so buttery, but not too sweet. The recipe for the cupcakes was very good as well. With 4 eggs, and three sticks of butter, along with sour cream, it should! I used Valrohna cocoa too. That is a recipe that I will go back to again.

Dinner table set and ready for guests! If you click on the photo, you can see the lanterns and little candy boxes that I made out of October issue of MSL. They were very fun to make and turned out real cute. Now I have to figure out how to store them, as they took a while to make and I want to save them.
Our good friends Tim and Christine, along with their three adorable children came for dinner. Pictured from left to right; Christine, holding baby Eva, Daniel, Nicole.
Daniel finally got his cupcake after waiting patiently for the grown ups to finish the cheese course.
Pierre is hiding behind the cupcakes, then Cyrous, Caitlin, and Sophia, the oldest of Christine and Tim's children.
Here is a better picture of miss Sophia.

In all the rush, I didn't photograph the actual food! I made a braised chicken dish with prunes, olives, capers. The recipe comes from one of my favorite restaurant in Sonoma called, "The Girl and The Fig." I really wished I had taken a photo of it because it was so good. It was marinated all night then braised....I served mashed potatoes with it, and a simple mixed green salad.

It was a lot of fun having everyone over and a way for us to have little ones around during the Halloween holiday.

Happy Halloween!!