Red Velvet Cupcakes

Last week I made these delicious Red Velvet Cupcakes with Vanilla Bean-Cream Cheese Frosting for my mom's book club from Paula Deen's Holiday Baking Issue. They were amazing! I then topped them with an idea I'd seen in Martha Stewart Living called "Broken Glass Cupcakes". I thought I'd share as they were a great treat with a fun Halloween twist!

Red Velvet Cupcake Ingredients:
(makes 2 dozen cupcakes)
-1 cup butter, softened
-2 cups sugar
-1 tablespoon vanilla extract
-3 large eggs
-1 teaspoon distilled white vinegar
-2 cups all-purpose flour
-1/2 cup unsweetened cocoa powder
-1/2 teaspoon baking soda
-1/2 teaspoon salt
-1/2 cup buttermilk
-1/2 cup sour cream
-one 1oz bottle red food coloring

1. Preheat oven to 350 degrees F. Line two 12-cup muffin pans with paper liners.
2. In a large bowl, beat butter, sugar, and vanilla at medium speed with a mixer until fluffy. Add eggs, one at a time, beating well after each addition. Beat in vinegar.
3. In a medium bowl, combine flour, cocoa, baking soda, and salt. Add to butter mixture alternately with buttermilk, beginning and ending with flour mixture, beating just until combined after each addition. Stir in sour cream and food coloring.

4. Spoon batter into prepared muffin cups, filling two-thirds full. Bake for 16 to 20 minutes or until a wooden pick inserted in center comes out clean. Cool in pans for 10 minutes. Remove cupcakes from pans, and cool completely on wire racks.

Vanilla Bean-Cream Cheese Frosting Ingredients:
(makes about 5 cups - note: I had A LOT left over but I'm not one to pile on the icing)
-3/4 cup butter, softened
-one 8 oz package cream cheese, softened
-1 tablespoon vanilla extract
-1 vanilla bean, split and scraped, seeds reserved
-4 cups confectioners' sugar (note: Paula called for 7 cups but that seemed like so much to me and it was already very sweet)

1. In a large bowl, beat butter, cream cheese, vanilla extract, and vanilla bean seeds at medium speed with a mixer until creamy. Gradually add confectioner's sugar, beating until smooth.
2. Spread or pipe onto cooled cupcakes.

Ingredients for the caramel (which will become the 'broken glass"):
-1 1/2 cups granulated sugar
-3/4 cup water

 

1. Bring the granulated sugar and water to a boil in a small high-sided saucepan, stirring, until sugar dissolves. Reduce heat to medium-high, and cook until mixture just starts to turn pale gold around the edges. Remove from heat, and immediately pour caramel onto a rimmed baking sheet. Working quickly, tilt pan to spread caramel to edges to make a very thin layer. Let cool to harden.

*I find caramel extremely difficult to make (but I've only made two dishes involving it). I never noticed it turn a pale gold around the edges and I made the batch twice. The first time, I kept stirring and the second time I stopped after it began to boil (which I'd read to do online). It took a long time for it to thicken and I finally gave up waiting for it to change color and poured it out onto the sheet. Luckily, it worked. Oh, and when they say work quickly, they mean it! It hardened very fast and I wasn't able to create as thin a layer as I would have liked.

 

2. Twist pan to release and break caramel in order for it to resemble broken glass. (I then set it aside as it made the caramel the day before. My caramel became cloudy and didn't look as pretty as Martha's (but it surprisingly tasted good!)). Place a shard or two of caramel "glass" in the center of each cupcake. Drizzle or pipe cherry preserves where caramel has entered the cupcake.
*I used red gel frosting

The results were pure deliciousness! Everyone in my mom's book club had one and took one home for later. My dad had one and he sat down and took a bite and said, "These are pretty good." And he continued eating and it evolved into "Oh man, these are **** good!" and he got another one :) ... and another one :D

Please note, this was my first attempt at piping! I'll do better next time!

I'm participating in the Craft-O-Maniac Monday Link Party! Head on over to see the other blogs and their great fall ideas!!

A Spooky/Kooky Pumpkin Family

Here is my spooky kooky family of pumpkins! We've got vampires, zombies, and mummies oh my!

I love these pumpkins but I must say, I'm a bit disappoint - I suppose with the quality of the pumpkins I bought because they're already getting gross and it hasn't even been a week! When you make yours, make sure it's closer to Halloween!

This weekend, I'm linking up to...
Eighteen25 Halloween Linkup

Mummy Pumpkin

The last of the Martha Stewart Living pumpkins is a mummy!! I can't find it on the website but it's in this month's magazine! So you will need:
-oblong pumpkin/gourd
-white streamers
-some type of tack for the eye
-black permanent marker
-mini saw for carving pumpkins
-tape

I started off with an acorn squash as I thought it would be the perfect shape.

 

Then I cut out the holes for the eyes and put the thumbtacks in.

 

However, at that point the squash started 'crying'. Juices were oozing out of the circles I'd cut out as you can see in the pictures above. I didn't want to wrap it in the streamer because it would get yucky so I put the squash holes-down on paper towels on Saturday and left it for two days (my original intention was one but I got side-tracked Sunday and made them on Monday instead). Then I could finally start wrapping! Just go around and around until you get what you like and put two dots on the tacks for eyes with the marker. Note: Martha called for double sided tape but I made it work with normal!

 

Here's mine!

Doesn't he look cozy? He might be more baby pumpkin than mummy pumpkin :)

I made another zombie and vampire pumpkin too on Monday!

One eye socket was accidentally made too big but it still kind of works. I used a larger mouth template since my pumpkin was bigger and tried to make the eyes further apart.

For the vamp, I made sure I made my mouth template inside the lines as my teeth were a bit smaller.

October is nearly halfway over! Are you decorated for Halloween?

Vampire Pumpkins!

The next set of pumpkins from Martha Stewart Living were vampire themed! Here is Martha's:

 

As I mentioned in my Zombie Pumpkin post, I had trouble finding white pumpkins so I decided to use this orange gourd I found at the supermarket. I turned it upside-down for a cute little knobby head.

After using a thumbtack to make an imprint of the mouth (stencil found through above link), I cut it out with the saw.

Next, the vampire fangs had to be fit in. The ones Martha Stewart had were probably bigger as I looked them up on the Party City website and they were $3 each and were for ages 17 and older. Mine were for 3 and up and were only about $.52. Unlike the zombie pumpkins where you need to create a cone or angled hole for the eyes, this needed to be cut into the shape all the way through so you could fit the teeth in.

I didn't have map tacks lying around and wasn't about to go buy them just for this. I did have red thumbtacks but instead I used these wire berries from a pine cone and berry Christmas decoration I had lying around for some wreaths I'll be working on (and hopefully sharing) in the upcoming months.

And here is the finished product! Along with an interested Zeus.

To go with my new vampire pumpkins, I made Martha's accompanying bats. I bought a bag of gourds from the store and used those.

I decided to use dark purple with the white and black on the striped. The templates for the wings can be found on the Martha Stewart Living link. You fold up the last 1/4 inch so you can glue it down.

The magazine said to glue it on with a hot glue gun which I did. However, my wings keep falling off! I'm thinking hot glue just doesn't work well with pumpkin rind. Any suggestions?

 

Stay tuned for tomorrow's post on mummy pumpkins!

Zombie Pumpkins

While flipping through a copy of Martha Stewart Living magazine, I stumbled across a bunch of easy pumpkin carving ideas that I HAD to try! I hadn't carved pumpkins in years but the moment I saw them, I rushed out for supplies. The first was a zombie pumpkin. Here's what Martha's looked like:

 

I couldn't find white pumpkins anywhere so I just tried to find some of a small-medium size. I wanted something a bit different and not just orange (although I'll be using that later and featuring all my pumpkins together at the end of the week) so I bought a buttercup squash from the grocery store.

 

I made circles for the eyes and just kept carving them until they were big enough that the eye wedged in the hole. These will need to be 'cone' shaped (so angled). I found the buttercup squash to have an extra difficult to cut rind. It also turned my fingers temporarily green!

Then, with the label that I printed from the zombie page (linked above), I used a thumb tack to draw an outline of the mouth which made it a lot easier to carve.

Then you just shove the eyeballs in at different angles and you have your zombie! I think mine looks more silly than zombie-ish but it's still so cute! I smile every time I see it! In retrospect, I think when I make another one this week, I'll space the eyes further apart to see if that helps.

 braiinnssss

Stay tuned all week for more pumpkins - including vampire and mummy all courtesy of Martha Stewart Living!