Happy Halloween Cupcakes with Brains & Ghosts

Ingredients:

Sponge

110gr unsalted butter

110gr caster sugar

90g self-raising flour

20gr. cocoa powder

1 tsp baking powder

2 large eggs

1tsp pure vanilla extract

1-2 tbsp desiccated coconut (depends how much you enjoy the coconut)

Buttercream

240gr. unsalted butter

340gr. icing sugar

1 tsp vanilla extract

1tbsp coconut extract (you can add more or less depending on your taste)

450gr. cream cheese

Decorations

White fondant

Red edible colouring

Sugar eyes

This is the super easy way to make these super spooky but cute cupcakes!

It doesn’t take ages, just a bit of effort for the decoration and that’s it!!

Method:

Baking the sponge

We start by preheating the oven to 180 degrees centigrade/Gas Mark 4

This amount of batter will give us 12 mini cupcakes, so we need a baking cupcake tray for 12 pieces and 12 paper cases.

Right! Let’s start our cupcakes.

1. Add the butter and the sugar in the mixing bowl and beat until light and fluffy!

2. Add the two eggs, one by one and then add the vanilla extract flavouring.

3. Next you should put together in a separate mixing bowl, the flour, the cocoa powder and the baking powder and mix well.

4. When we have the texture we are looking for in our butter mix and it is all light and fluffy, then we add the flour mix and let it incorporate nicely (allow it to have 4-5 turns at least if you are using a stand mixture)

5. When the flour is incorporated, finally add the coconut and give it 2-3 turns to mix it thoroughly.

6. Our mix is ready! Using a table spoon, we divide the batter into the 12 cases and bake in the oven for 15 minutes.

TIP: Check with a skewer if is baked nicely from the inside and when it does take it out of the oven. The skewer should cme out clean with no sticky, uncooked mixture clinging to it.

7. Let the cupcakes rest in their baking tray for 4-5 minutes and then empty the cupcakes from the tray on a rack to let them cool down completely before decorating.

Decorating the Cakes:

The next step, is to make our lovely buttercream. The buttercream has to be silky and smooth and be able to “hold” after it sets.

Buttercream:

1. First we put the butter (that has to be in room temperature), the icing sugar and the vanilla and coconut flavourings in the mixing bowl of a stand mixer, if you have one, or an ordinary bowl if you don’t!

2. We beat at a medium speed (4-5) for 10 minutes precisely. It is much easier to use a stand or hand mixer but this can be done manually if you prefer.

3. Next we add the cream cheese and allow it 5-6 turns in the stand mixer, enough to make sure that cheese and buttercream have been incorporated perfectly.

Our buttercream is ready! We can use it immediately or we can put it in a piping bag and put it in the fridge if we are going to use it after hours.

When our cupcakes are cooled down then we can go ahead with the decorations.

Ghost Cupcakes

For the ghost cupcakes, we are using a thicker piping nozzle and we create a swirl that ends to a peak. That was it! We stick the sugar eyes or we can create the eye balls with some royal icing if we wish.

TIP: These little eyes are easily made with some blobs of black & white royal icing however this Halloween we were super lazy and bought a bag of eyes from the supermarket!

Brain Cupcakes

1. For the brain cupcakes, start by putting a thick layer of buttercream on the top of each cupcake and we then we try to create a dome with the assistance of a small spatula. The little dome will help us to create the brain illusion later.

2. After that, we take some white. fondant and roll it into along, thin suasage-like ‘worm’ , about the thickness of a cigarette (if you can remember how thin they are!)

3. Then we create small shapes out of it. We should not use only one “worm” to create the entire brain… We use a small piece and we create this wiggly brain shape. Once it finishes we take another piece and stick it together.

4. Before we start adding the fondant, we draw a vertical line with a knife to create the two parts of the brain. Then we make sure that when we put the fondant, this line will remain.

5. When we finish with the fondant job, we draw again the line between the two parts of our {brain” to make it look more realistic.

6. Finally, with the help of a super thin brush, we take the red edible food colouring and apply it at the edges of the fondant, giving the illusion of blood as you can see above.

…….And that was it! Our brains… are in order! :)