Photography: John Paul Urizar. Styling: Vanessa Austin.
Skip the toil and trouble and make a batch of super simple Halloween cupcakes! They’re easy to decorate using store bought lollies and deliciously frightful. This recipe makes six spooky eye cupcakes and six sour worm cupcakes.
Ingredients
Method
Preheat oven to 180°C (160°C fan-forced). Line a 12-hole (⅓ cup/80ml) muffin pan with paper cases.
Beat butter, vanilla and sugar in a small bowl with an electric mixer until light and fluffy. Beat in the eggs, one at a time, until combined between additions. Stir in sifted flour and milk in two batches. Divide mixture among the paper cases. Bake for about 15-20 minutes or until a skewer inserted into the centre comes out clean. Turn the cakes, top-side up, onto a wire rack to cool.
BUTTER CREAM: Meanwhile, beat butter in a small bowl with an electric mixer until as white as possible. Gradually beat in half the sifted icing sugar, milk, then remaining icing sugar. Place half the Butter Cream in a small bowl. Tint one bowl green and the other red.
Cut a 1.5cm-deep hollow from the centre of six cakes. Spread green Butter Cream over cakes. Position sour worms in the hollows.
Spread red Butter Cream over the remaining six cakes. Trim pointy tops of marshmallows; centre on cakes for white of eyes. Position sweets on marshmallows to form pupils. Use white icing to pipe veins around eyes.
Decorating Halloween cupcakes
For bold colours, it’s preferable to use gel or powder colours, which are available from cake decorating stores and other specialty stores. Liquid colours can be used, but may make the icing soft.
If using liquid colours, halve the amount of milk when making the Butter Cream. If icing becomes too runny, add a little more sifted icing sugar.
To save time, you can use a 470g packet butter cake mix instead of making your own cupcakes.
