First, I wanted to try making red velvet cupcakes using my mum's recipe which uses grenadine. After putting a few ingredients together and getting this gross-looking concoction, I knew the Halloween baking was off to a good start. Now I need a recipe that looks like this when it's done!
The first decorating idea was creepy crawlies. This comes from "Hello Cupcake" by Karen Tack and Alan Richardson. I used an icing pen for the legs and antennae, where I think they use chocolate, because I happened to find one while shopping for ingredients.
Then the bodies are made out of M&Ms.
I stuck to centipedes and spiders, but in the book they do ticks, scorpions and ants as well.
Things I learned - centipedes need longer legs than you think, and a bend in their body to look creepy. The redbacks managed scary easily enough (well, scary for something made of sugar).
Next up was eyeballs. Inspired by this lady on Martha Stewart. I had some trouble with the eyeballs. The pupils are slices of soft liquorice, the irises and red streaks are bits of jelly snake. The problem? The snakes kept wanting to straighten up again. Any suggestions?
Then I switched to cream cheese icing and some brains. I saw some on Pinterest and it looked so easy! At first my icing was too runny and the brains sunk and lost their shape. Even when I thickened it up it still wasn't as easy as I had imagined. (I kinda hate people who make the beautiful foods you find in cookbooks and on the internet. It looks easy. I just can't do it!)
Then some owls. These are also from Hello Cupcake.
Again, piping the feathers etc was harder than it looked (I've done that before though, and maybe butter cream icing is a better consistency for it) and my oreos just wouldn't come cleanly apart! But it is a super-cute design so I think it still works.
Looking forward to trying to perfect some of these designs next weekend at the Craft Party.
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