Brain Cupcakes

Happy Halloween!
My mom put me it charge of figuring out what to bake for our Halloween Party this year. I came across this super adorable (freaky?) Brain Cupcakes on Annie's Eats.

those cupcakes had strawberry jam in the middle. So it oozed out when you bit in it. Vampire-ish?

But I had no jam. Zilch, nada.
Okay, so maybe i did have Fig Jam, but it wasn't bloody looking.

So i had to improvise (again), and coloured the cupcake batter pink in some bits so it looked body-ish.

i am really no good at descriptions, am i?

Look at that. Mama is proud. I had my fingers crossed the whole time these babies were in the oven because i had a feeling i loaded too much batter in each cup and it was going to overflow (been there, done that).

But they were perfect. Perfect!

Next up, Brain-coloured butter cream icing.
I just put in a tad bit of red food colouring and got the brainiest brain colour ever.

Piping the brains is another story altogether. I am generally okay with piping. And when i say okay, i mean i do not squirt large, uneven amounts of icing onto the cupcake top while screaming and scraping cream off the piping bag.

For brains, you need to draw a circle around the cupcake, then two lines down the center--dividing the circle.

That part is pretty simple.

Then you need to take your piping bag and fill in your semi-circles with zig-zag, squiggly lines.
(This is where my mother got invited unknowingly into the kitchen, and a piping bag full of brain-coloured butter cream got shoved into her hands. While her teenage daughter ran screaming from the kitchen. I can't take it anymore!!!)

We went a step further, and released our inner mad-scientists.
We got really, really, really red icing and used a really, really, really small piping nozzle to pipe blood vessels (gasp!) in the brains.

Pretty freaky, huh?

It looks pretty on the inside, anyhow.
Even though i was aiming for gory.

Here is my cupcake recipe. It's the basic vanilla flavoured one.
If you want to get fancy with the colours like i did, simply divide the batter in half before baking, colour seperately, then scoop alternately into cupcake liners.

Basic Vanilla Cupcakes
225g unsalted butter, soft
225g sugar
225g self-raising flour
1 tsp baking powder
4 eggs
1 tsp vanilla essence

Cream butter and sugar together till pale yellow. Add eggs one at a time, beating well after each addition. Combine all the dry ingredients and add it to the beaten butter mixture together with the vanilla essence.

Preheat oven to 175 degrees C and line a cupcake tray. Sppon batter into liners and bake in preheated oven for about 15 minutes. Cool for 5 minutes in tin before removing to place on a wire rack.

Buttercream
225g unsalted butter, soft
375g icing sugar
pinch of salt
1 tsp of flavouring (optional)
Dash of colouring (optional)

cream butter until it is soft and very pale in colour. while whisking, add the sifted icing sugar a spoonful at a time. Make sure the icing sugar is well combined. Lastly add flavouring and colouring (optional)

Carrot Cake Cupcakes

You know what cake i love more than anything?
A cake with vegetables, i mean. (my absolute favourite is cheesecake)

Carrot cake.

And do you know what would be even more awesome (and potentially dangerous) than carrot cakes?

Carrot cake Cupcakes.

i say dangerous because what's going to stop you if you have dozens of bite-sized servings of this cake?
Nothing.

Except maybe an exploding stomach.

The sprinkles were my idea. I'm all for sprinkles now. Sprinkles FTW!

So we had the cupcakes iced and ready.

I did some of them in these little souffle cups i bought and then discovered you can't actually BAKE in them.

So i had to peel out the cupcake from the liner all baked and ready AND THEN fit it neatly into the paper cup.

this is one of the plain ones. The piping was really easy, but the bag occasionally slipped from my hand and left loads of icing-less bits peeking through on my first few cupcakes.

The icing is cream cheese. I never thought cheese would be good as a frosting until now.

i told you i had a thing for sprinkles.

We tried to get a bit classy and do the others with White chocolate bits and those little silver balls we all love so well but have no idea what it is named.

Man, these were good.

Next up for cupcakes: Funfetti!

Although it may be a while before i do another cupcake.

I've been DYING to try home made Pop tarts.

Cookie Monster Cupcakes

These were a present for my friend who is in love with all these sesame street-cupake designs.

They were so cool i felt like a murderer eating the spare one i made for myself.

WHAT YOU WILL NEED:
-four cupcakes (or muffins.)
-cream icing
-blue food colouring
-8 white chocolate buttons
-8 chocolate chips
-2 cookies. You can use chocolate chip, but i only had ginger snaps at that point.

WHAT YOU WILL DO:

1. You have to make sure that there are no overhanging bits on the cupcake/muffin. just cut any cul[rit batter off with a sharp knife.

2. Take your cream icing and drop some food colouring until you are satisfied with the colour. I wanted a lighter kind of blue. But if you want a true-blue (pun intended) cookie monster kind of blue, you will have to go a few shades darker.

3. spread the blue icing over the top of your four cupcakes/muffins. Use the flat part of you knife, or the back of a spoon, to make the frosting 'stand up'. You do this by touching the frosting with the kife/spoon and quickly lifting it off the cupcake so the icing stand up in spikes.

4. Put 2 white chocolate buttons as the eyes, and use some spare icing to 'glue' the chocolate chips on as pupils. You can put one pupil facing up and a nother facing the right direction to get the cokie-monster kookiness.

5. Use a knife to cut a mouth in the cupcake. Cut a ginger snap into two even halfs and put one half into his mouth.

Prefect for little kiddies parties, i must say.

i'll have to dig up the cream icing recipe and put it up here when i find it.

Tie Dye Cupcakes

I think these are just adorable.
Rainbow cupcakes!
whoever came up with them is a genius, i say.

I used two or three drops of food colouring only, although many recipes say that a whole bottle of colouring is needed.

I do suggest making the colour a little darker than what you want because it kind of lightens in the oven.

How do you do it?
Really, really easy peasy.

you don't even need home-made cupcake batter.
(although i did use home made cake batter because i find it more reassuring).

WHAT YOU WILL NEED:
-cupcake batter (if it is the mix kind just prepare it as the box instructs but DO NOT BAKE yet)
-Food colouring
-5 plastic cups (or more if you want more colours)
-Cupcake pan with cupcake liners
-Plastic forks (i find forks mix better than spoons)

WHAT YOU WILL DO:

-Separate cupcake batter evenly into plastic cups

-Colour the batter in each cup a different colour. i used orange, pink, purple, blue and green.

-mix it well with a fork

-Take one colour (note that this will be the colour of the bottom of your cupcake) and drop even scoops into each cupcake liner. Take a second colour and drop scoops of it on top of your base colour.

-Do this for all yoru colours until you have no more left.

-At this point you can choose to use a toothpick to stir the colours gently so you geet a marbles effect. but i didn't do this.

-Bake as per normal. You do not have to flatten your batter in the liners before baking because they even out in the oven.


They are so simple and so fun and crazy.
You could use aluminium wrappers and cover the top of the cupcake with frosting so that nobody suspects the crazy colours that lie within.

You could also mix the colours for special occasions.
Like Green and red for christmas?
Blue and red for Independance day?

Go crazy.