Halloween Cupcake #1: Feed Me Frankenstein

Halloween's coming up, so I thought I'd try out some festive treats. Tonight I made some chocolate cupcakes with a chocolate whipped cream filling/frosting that are adorned by none other than Mr. Frankenstein ('s monster).

For the actual cupcake, I went with this, minus the chocolate chips. I had some troubles along the way. Not with the recipe, but more so with my ability to overfill liners (half to me is always 2/3 or even 3/4 occasionally). Also, they never quite seemed fully cooked to me. They came out a little too moist and sticky for me not to be suspect. And one more: my baking powder is waaay expired, and I do declare, it's fouling up my tiny cakes.

The whipped cream I also swiped from Cupcake Project (I always head there when an idea comes to me) , except I quadrupled it for my needs. I'll reprint it here for the sake of being efficient.

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Chocolate Whipped Cream:

2 c heavy whipping cream
1 c sugar (if properly quadrupling, you'd get 1/2 cup, but I wanted it a bit sweeter)
1/2 c cocoa powder

Beat whipping cream until soft peaks form. Beat in sugar. Beat in cocoa.

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Oh yeah. I also added some purple coloring gel to this hoping to get a pleasant shade of violet, and ended up with a gruesome shade of bleh. So there's that. 

Now on to my favorite part:

My favorite? The one on the far right in the middle row. He came out so much more terrified than terrifying. An honorable mention goes out to the impostor in the corner.

I didn't come up with these guys. I remember seeing them a few years ago in a magazine and have wanted to make them ever since. These are Fudge Grahams partially dipped in slightly melted butter cream frosting that has been dyed green (which came out so excellently green, not bleh). The eye brows and mouths are done in Wilton's black sparkle gel. The eyes are those little cinnamon candies. You know the ones. They were originally going to be M&M minis, but I had these on hand and since these are a trial run cupcake, I didn't think it'd matter. I actually do like the random burst of cinnamon that you get from these heads though. Go figure.

I was actually a little afraid to try these, thinking they'd be far too sweet for someone who may or may not have eaten a bunch of extra chocolate whipped cream and saw a tummy ache on the horizon. Still, I tried one and was rather surprised that I wasn't instantly heaving. They were just sweet enough.

As a final note, I'd like to mention that I use flash when I take closeups even though it's a no-no. I've tried everything I can to not use flash, but it is dim as the dickens around here, and I don't have the ISO speed or the steady hands to pull off a decently lit photograph. So that's that.

Darling Cherry Darlings

My tinkering with Cupcake Project's wonderfully dense orange cupcakes has yielded some vaguely cherry cupcakes that I've been referring to as Cherry Darlings in my mind since I first decided to make a cherry cupcake. I realize they're damn near identical to the cupcakes in the previous entry, but let me note some differences:

1. They are a sweet shade of magenta.

2. The frosting? A hint of pink, not just white.

3. There's a little heart, see? Totally different cupcakes.

Okay, so when thinking of cherry flavored things, I was presented with some decisions. What I ended up going with was not any sort of fresh cherry flavor, but rather, the more juvenile cherry Kool-Aid flavor. Why? Because I like it more. Sue me. 

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Cherry Darling recipe:

3 c cake flour

1/2 tsp salt

1 tsp baking powder

1/2 tsp baking soda

1 cup butter or margarine 

1/2 cup sugar

1/2 cup Kool-Aid mix (of the sugar variety, not the unsweetened little packs)

4 oz condensed milk
1 oz milk
3 eggs

3/4 cup vanilla yogurt

Preheat oven to 350 degrees. 

Mix together flour, salt, baking soda and baking powder in medium bowl and set aside. In large bowl, cream butter until smooth, then add sugar and Kool-Aid. Add milk and condensed milk. Beat in one egg at a time. Add flour mixture 1/3 at a time. Mix in yogurt. Fill cups about 3/4 full and bake for 18-20 minutes. Makes about 16 cupcakes.

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For the frosting, I just added some cherry flavoring and a little coloring to the leftover vanilla frosting I made the other day.

I liked how these came out, even though some of the density was lost. They're not too overpowering, which I was afraid of because when it comes to flavoring, I tend to over do it, and these vaguely cherry cakes could have easily become cough syrup cakes. So there it is.

Simple Orange and Vanilla Cupcakes

Orange cupcake recipe from Cupcake Project (with added red and yellow food coloring to make an orange-ier orange color)

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Vanilla Frosting:

     2 1/2 sticks unsalted butter

     5 c powdered sugar

     1 tbsp pure vanilla extract

     1 tbsp milk

     Beat butter until creamy. Add sugar one cup at a time, beating until smooth between each cup. Add vanilla and milk. Beat until fluffy.

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I tried adding a filling to these cupcakes that was too heavy to balance out the density of the cake (and was fairly tasteless in its own right). I'm going to tinker with this recipe and make something workable for Sunday. I'm thinking cherries for this next batch.