Creepy cupcakes

Okay, I admit. They're not creepy. In fact they're quite cute. Cute cupcakes doesn't really sound like a fitting blog post for Halloween cupcakes though. Halloween is one of my favorite holidays of the year.

Who doesn't like Halloween? Being able to dress up and stuff yourself silly with candy and not get any lip from anyone? Plus I love seeing little kids dressed up and even super creative adult costumes. Although I still think I'm in a baking funk, I couldn't resist baking off.. oh.. a few dozen cupcakes. Okay.. fine, a little over six dozen isn't quite a few and I was up until 2AM whipping up butter cream frosting. C'mon peoples, there are 24 usable hours in a day!

The cupcake recipe is Martha Stewart's Devil's Food Cupcake. To be honest, I didn't care much for it; it was a bit dense. Maybe there was a little too much flour because I'm used to weighing everything and not using cups and teaspoons. If there's a petition to have Americans start using the metric system for baking... sign me up! Other than the density issue, the cupcake was moist and had good flavor. For the frosting, I used French butter cream and also an Italian meringue butter cream (for the ghosts), which is just my Italian meringue recipe with almost equal amounts of butter added. I ended up using two to three pounds of butter for my 6 dozen cupcakes. I think next up on the list, I'll make some low-fat, oatmeal, artery cleansing date bars, and prevent my unsuspecting victims taste testers from going into cardiac arrest.

French butter cream:


Egg yolks 120g
Eggs 140g
Granulated sugar 500g
Water 125g
Butter 800g
Vanilla bean 1/2 (or two teaspoons of vanilla extract)


Cook the sugar with water to 121°C. Beat the eggs and yolks lightly, add the contents of the scraped vanilla bean (or vanilla extract). While beating, add the cooked sugar to this mixture once it is light and fluffy. Beat until the mixture is cool. Incorporate the softened butter. Continue beating the butter cream to increase volume. If storing the butter cream in the fridge, do not beat to increase volume, but re-whip prior to use. You may need to soften the butter cream in a bain-marie/water bath.