I'm quite an easy person to please really, a nice cookbook and I'm quite happy. Make it a horror themed cupcake book and I'm happier than a vampire given a free run in a blood bank. So when I was given A Zombie Ate My Cupcake! by Lily Vanilli for my birthday this year I was more than a little chuffed.
Alas, Halloween came and went, and my little vampire-self was not invited to the ball, so I had no excuse to make any of these wickedly fun creations. Until, that is, I started showing this book to anyone who had the time to look and my cousin requested a giant ghost cake for her 21st birthday party.
Now, the particular design in question, as all of the cakes in the book, is for cupcakes with a side note that once the smaller versions have been mastered, a full-size cake could be tackled. But who has time to practice? So I decided to jump straight in, one giant ghost cake coming up!
I started with just a basic sponge cake, and filled it with a chocolate fudge butter cream - because we need some chocolate in there somewhere.
Then on to the icing. This was a, fairly simple to make, meringue type icing - in that it was mainly egg whites and sugar. There was copious amounts of whisking involved, but seeing as I have recently been upgraded from a hand whisk to a new fangled electric one, this was no longer an obstacle that inevitably resulted in blistered fingers and a very achy arm. Within no time I could turn the bowl upside down and hold it over my head, without the fear of getting a face full of icing - although I can't say I would really have complained if that had happened as the icing tasted much like marshmallow fluff, yummy.
So, then on to the tricky bit, the build. This took more marshmallows than I had anticipated - the whole bag - and at one point I actually considered making a quick dash to the shops to get another bag, (well I did promise a 'giant' ghost cake). But seeing as I was covered in the usual smattering of flour, sugar and whatever else I had picked up from the bake, I decided against it.
But luckily there was enough icing to pad out any missing marshmallows. Once the rough shape was in place, it was onto the finer points of decoration. And here's where I realised there was a slight problem: I had no black icing, or food colouring, to do the eyes. What a school-boy error for a fledgling goth baker. Cue a mad rummage through the cupboards for inspiration. I decided to try currants - being the only black edible material I could find. But I wasn't happy with the results, so then decided to try chocolate, although not having any dark, had to use milk, which wasn't black enough - this was not going well!
I settled on chocolate eyes, with a currant pupil. The mouth was a different story, after trying out several currant/chocolate combos, I decided that just sculpting the icing would be the best compromise.
It could probably have been better, but for my first attempt I'm quite pleased - looks a little menacing which I like. Although he has the look of Slimer about him (you remember, from Ghostbusters), so next time think I might throw some green food colouring into the icing and see if I can really work on the likeness. For next Halloween maybe...
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