Halloween Cupcakes

I seem to do a lot of baking outside of my "1 ingredient, 5 recipes" project so I thought I'd start posting those too.

These are very simple but very delicious vanilla cupcakes that Joe and I decorated for the trick or treaters......that never came. Was initially disappointed but then realised it meant they had to go somewhere - in my mouth.

Makes 24 cupcakes

Ingredients

For the cakes

350g unsalted butter, softened
350g golden caster sugar
6 large free range eggs
350g self raising flour, sifted
Finely grated zest of 1 lemon
2 tsp vanilla extract

For the decoration

150g unsalted butter, softened
800g icing sugar, sifted
A splash or two of milk
Food colouring (red, blue, yellow) (optional)
Writing icing (in various colours) (optional)
Chocolate buttons

Method

Start by preheating the oven to 190C (170C for fan ovens)/gas mark 5. Line two 12-hole muffin pans with paper cases.

Cream together the butter and sugar until pale and fluffy. Beat in the eggs one at a time, incorporating each egg fully before adding the next one. As you do this, if the mixture looks like it might be curdling, add a level tablespoon of the flour.

Next mix in the flour, a couple of tablespoons at a time. This can all be done with an electric whisk. Once all the flour has been mixed through, add the vanilla and the lemon zest. Mix again.

Spoon the mixture equally between the paper cases and bake for 15-20 minutes until they are pale golden, risen and springy. Leave to cool in the tins for a few minutes and then transfer to a wire rack to cool completely.

Once completely cool you can move onto the artistic bit. I decided on 3 colours - white (for the eye balls), purple and orange. Beat the butter until light fluffy and then gradually beat in the sifted icing sugar. I found adding a splash of milk once you've added half the sugar and the another splash at the end gave the perfect spreading consistency.

For the eyeballs, I covered the tops of 8 cakes with the plain butter cream, added red "veins" with red writing icing and then plonked a caramel-filled chocolate button on top.

I then divided the remaining frosting into 2 bowls. I added red and yellow food colouring to one bowl to get bright pumpkin orange (took a bit of perseverance to get the right shade). I covered 8 cupcakes with this frosting which made the perfect base for Jack-o'-lantern themed cakes.

The last lot of frosting was mixed with red and blue food colouring to get a gothic and spooky purple. The black writing icing looked great against this and Joe produced a marvellous scary spider creation!

These are great little cupcakes that turned out really moist and rich. Really versatile too and can be used with different flavoured frostings and can be made as fancy or as plain as you like. All in all, a great success and I will be enrolling Joe a lot more to put the finishing touches to my baking projects!