Ghastly Ghouls

Last year I made several different cupcakes for Halloween. This one is from Lily Vanilli's A Zombie Ate My Cupcake book.  It is full of fabulously weird cupcake recipes perfect for this time of year. I loved the book so much that I bought a copy for my sister-in law and my cousin.

The meringue frosting is quite messy (that may be just me) but it is totally worth it.

Instead of using black fondant for the eyes, I used silver and gold edible balls which were really effective.

Ghastly Ghouls

(Makes 12 cupcakes)

Ingredients:

One batch of vanilla cupcakes

12 White Marshmallows

Black fondant or chocolate chips

For the meringue frosting:

4 Large Egg Whites

200g Granulated Sugar

¼ tsp cream of tartar

Pinch of Salt

Directions:

1. You will need a small saucepan and a heatproof bowl that will sit neatly on top of it (or use a double boiler, if you have one). Pour a few cups of water into the pan and bring to the boil. The water should not touch the base of the bowl.
2. Whisk the egg whites, sugar, cream of tartar, and salt in the bowl using an electric mixer, then place the bowl above the boiling water and continue whisking until the mixture is hot to touch and all the sugar has dissolved – about 1-2 minutes.
3. Remove from the heat and, using the mixer on medium-high speed, beat until the eggs form a cool stiff meringue, about 5 minutes or until hard peaks have formed.
4. Secure a marshmallow vertically in the centre of each cake using a tiny bad of the meringue, and use a spoon to heap frosting on top of each cupcake to make a ghost shape. Smooth the edges with the back of the spoon.
5. Use black fondant or chocolate chips to create 'eyes' with suitably menacing expression.

Halloween Cupcakes

I also made the above cakes using a basic chocolate cupcake then using butter cream icing to make the mummies and the brains. A very quick and easy way to make cupcakes for Halloween parties.

Witches Fingers

I hope that you agree that these witches fingers biscuits look quite repulsive but they do taste very good. The melted chocolate under the nails give the impression of dirt.  

I made these at Christmas time but added some green food colouring to the dough turning them into Grinch's fingers. 

Witches Fingers

Ingredients:

100g Butter

100g Caster Sugar

200g Plain Flour

Few drops Vanilla Essence

Whole Blanched Almonds (one per biscuit)

Milk Chocolate

Directions:

1. Preheat over to 180C,
2. Mix together the butter, sugar, vanilla essence and flour into a firm dough.
3. Shape into 'fingers' marking with fine lines across the middle to look like knuckles, and flatten slightly at the top end to look like a finger nail. Press in a blanched almond into each finger.
4. Bake for 10-12 minutes until golden then remove from the oven and allow to cool on a wire rack.
5. Melt the chocolate, remove the almond from the finger and paint over the fingernail area with the melted chocolate and immediately replace the almond nail.