Late Post : Carrot Cupcakes, Halloween Festivites, and My Betrothed's Birthday

I have been MIA as of late, and it's because I've found myself busier than usual! Between Halloween, a hurricane, and cake orders at home, my blog has fallen by the wayside. :(  But no more!

The weekend before Halloween, I threw a Halloween Monster Mash/ Birthday Bash (for Roger's birthday). It was much fun, the food was amazing, and the costumes were awesome! I DIYed my devil costume, and managed to look quite snazzy-- except my corset was KILLING me. I think it was actually shifting my organs around! Eek! My Betrothed was an indie hipster (complete with finger mustache!) Thrifting for his clothes was a lot of hard work!

Anyhoo, for the party, I made carrot cupcakes, which were requested by my Betrothed, the birthday boy! I didn't really like how mixes turned out, so I went with a scratch carrot cake recipe. I obtained it from Taste of Home and the recipe can be found here. It came out tasty, but I wanted it more moist, so I may keep searching for other recipes or try to tweak this one in the future.

I topped my cupcakes with my cream cheese buttercream and Halloween sprinkles and voila!

The party-goers loved them-- and so did my Betrothed. :)

The next day, I made his birthday cake, which was The Eye of Sauron from The Lord of the Rings. He is a huge Tolkien fan-- so much so, that I'm pretty sure he's already getting in line for The Hobbit in theaters next month. I made my new trusty chocolate cake recipe and filled it with Dr. Oetker chocolate mousse. It was quite delicious and very moist. It was a hit with Roger and his family. :)

The writing is "Happy Birthday, Roger" in Elvish, I think

Slay that Eye! grrr

Ah, yes, this is my 100th post!!! It seemed like just yesterday that I started rambling about delicious sweet goodies. 2 years and 100 posts later, I am very proud that I've actually kept this up! (she said after a long hiatus)

Braaaaains (and Eyeballs)

My Betrothed had his birthday this past Friday (more on that later), so I decided to make him some delicious cuppin' cakes for the occasion. And why not make them Halloween-themed? I baked up some vanilla-almond cupcakes and whipped up some vanilla buttercream, and got to work on making brains and eyeballs!

The eyeballs were flat-iced then I added green for the iris and red for veins. I finished off with a black pupil. For the brains, I mixed up a brownish pink brainy color and used a Wilton tip 5 to freehand the folds. To divide the two "hemispheres," I ran a warm spatula down the middle.

The cupcakes were a definite hit! Perhaps the next time I make these, I should add a gooey filling. Mwahahaha! *cough* *ahem* Anyhoo...

These cupcakes inspire me to be an awesome zombie next year. I'm talking eyeball hanging off and a huge open wound on my throat and greenish. Ahh, yes... Stay tuned for that one!

Have a fun but safe Halloween, everyone!

Quick, Cute, and Easy Halloween Cupcakes

My beloved and I love celebrating Halloween. So we were definitely excited about going to a Halloween party. I figured I could make some cupcakes to bring along for everyone to enjoy. I made two different batches that were quite easy to make. Why? Well, they start with Duncan Hines cake mix. First, I started with these awesome-looking Wilton baking cups.

One batch was a white almond flavor (I used almond emulsion) with festive sprinkles mixed in.

Once baked, they had little orange and black specks in it! And they didn't end up crunchy, if anyone was wondering.

The second batch of cupcakes was a basic marble cake mix. After scooping out the one cup I needed to mix with the cocoa, I dyed the rest of the yellow cake batter orange.

Once the orange was scooped into the cups, I swirled in the chocolate, and voila!

I topped both with my butter-vanilla buttercream and added the remaining sprinkles for another festive touch and they ended up looking great both on the inside and out.

They were a definite hit at the party. And a sidenote: this could be done with Christmas Sprinkles as well (And just white cake mix dyed read and green and marbled together instead).

Pumpkin Carving!

 To properly prepare ourselves for this Halloweekend, my beloved and I decided to carve pumpkins together! We had a carving kit that included patterns of varying levels, so I picked a pirate skull design (level 2 of 4) and he chose a wolves-howling-at-the-moon-fancy-pants design (level 4). We drew out and cut open the pumpkins, remembering to leave a notch so that we can match it up when re-capping the pumpkins.

We scooped out the "guts" with the scraping tool from the kit (reminiscent of a grapefruit spoon), then we taped our designs onto the pumpkins.

Mmmm pumpkin seeds!

 Then we had to use the perforating tool to transfer the design. While my beloved was using his from the kit, I just used the same type of fondant tool (which is officially called a Serrated Quilting/ Cutting Wheel). Very convenient, since I was able to hold it like a pencil and follow the lines more precisely.

 We removed the design. After that, you could either rub a bit of flour over the design to reveal the little dots better or just trace it with a pen (I recommend the pen... the flour gets a bit messy)

Then we cut away with our little saws!

Gotta hand it to him... lots of little details. Great work!

 It was very fun carving out our pumpkins while watching Season 6 of The Office on Netflix. After all of our hard work, we rubbed petroleum jelly onto our cut edges (to prevent shriveling) and sat little battery-operated tea lights on the inside, and we were done!

 I love carving pumpkins! It's one of my favorite Halloween traditions (along with dressing up in costumes and acting like a fool haha)

Today, it so happens to be my beloved's birthday. So, of course, I am making him a cake... But what kind??? Well, we'll just have to see...