Zombie Loves Kit Kat

Busy today making some freaking cute cupcakes for my son's birthday.  I started on a Kit Kat theme 2 years ago.  Kit Kat's are my son's favorite candy.  First year I made a Kit Kat cake.  It was a big hit.  The next year I wanted to top the cake and I made a giant Kit Kat.  Again he was very impressed.  Wondering what I'd do this year I saw the cutest book at the craft store.  It is called "Zombie Cupcakes" by Zilly Rosen.  It's quite an adorable book for people who like Halloween and/or Zombies.  While thumbing through it I saw the zombie hand cupcake and knew what I'd do this year.  I'd combine my son's love of Zombies and Kit Kats.  These were very easy to make.  The supplies were easy to find at Michael's.  Then I just followed the directions in the book.  It has cupcake recipes and then decoration directions.  This cupcake was a chocolate oreo cupcake recipe with a chocolate ganache frosting.  It's going to be delicious in addition to adorable.

 

I really liked the lighting of the first picture, but it also made me see I needed to make the hand look more like it came out of the ground.

 

 With cookie crumbs around the bottom of the zombie hand I got the look I wanted.

A whole tray of zombie hand cupcakes.  They are going to be so much fun.

Chocolate Fudge Cherry Cake for the 17th time!

OK it's really the 11th time, but my daughter turned 17 and again she wanted her favorite cake.  My plan this year was to do something a little different like make it into an ice cream cake.  She decided though that she wanted to spend time on the lake with her friends for her birthday.  Sounded like fun to me, but ice cream would not do well at the lake.  I didn't know if any of them were going to come back to the house, so it was time for plan B.

Left on a kayak.

Came back on a paddle board.

I got to thinking that cupcakes would be a great plan.  I'd never made cupcakes out of this recipe and was a little afraid that it might be too soft of a recipe for cupcake wrappers.  I hate it when you peel the wrapper off a cupcake and half of the cupcake sticks to the wrapper.  You then feel the need to scrap the cake off the wrapper with your teeth eating some of the wrapper in the process.  I wasn't sure if this wasn't going to turn into one of those times, BUT one doesn't know if they don't try.

The recipe made 21 cupcakes.  Now what to do with the frosting.  I made the frosting as the recipe said.  The cupcakes did cool off by the time I got the frosting done.  This turned out to be a good thing.  I decided to dip the top of the cupcakes into the hot frosting.  Sort of a dip, pick up and twirl keeping the frosting on the cake and not on the wrapper.  It worked out great.  I let the cupcakes sit and the frosting cooled to a really nice semi hard shell.  Perfect for placing plastic wrap over on a tray and taking to the lake.  Turned out they peeled out of their wrapper perfectly.  The frosting layer was the perfect amount of frosting according to my daughter.  We may have found a great new way to serve her favorite birthday treat.

All the wrappers ended up in front of Diana and they started saying "Diana save some cupcakes for the rest of us."

I took 18 cupcakes to the lake for 7 teens. I sent an easy picnic lunch with them for their trip, but knew they'd be hungry when they returned. Thirsty and starving is what they said when they returned. I had an ice chest with cold drinks and 18 cupcakes that they promptly devoured.

Chocolate Fudge Cherry Cake
1 box Devil's Food Cake Mix
1 can cherry pie filling
2 eggs
1 teaspoon almond flavoring (optional) (It's not really optional you must use it.)

Frosting:
1 cup granulated sugar
5 tablespoons butter
1/3 cup milk
6 oz package of semisweet chocolate chips

Mix cake mix, cherry pie filling, eggs, and flavoring by hand. Pour batter into greased and floured 13x9x2-inch pan and bake at 350° about 30 minutes, or until a wooden pick or cake tester inserted in center comes out clean. (Bundt shaped pan works great just takes a little longer to bake.)
For frosting, place sugar, butter, and milk in a saucepan. Bring to a boil stirring constantly. Boil for one minute. Remove from the heat and stir in chocolate chips until smooth. Pour over warm cake.

Lynne's Note:  Cupcakes take 1/2 the time to bake.  While they are cooling prepare frosting.  Holding bottom of cupcake dip just the cake part of cupcake in frosting.  Pull up, twist and do a 1/2 twirl so string of frosting breaks and frosting stays only on top of cupcake.  Let all cupcakes sit not touching one another.  Frosting will harden to a beautiful chocolate shell that does not stick to plastic wrap.

PS.  BTW they all came back to the house.  Cell phone out daughter calling her dad, "Could you pretty please order 3 pizzas."

Cupcakes!!

My son is a great cook.  Sometimes I find a recipe that seems right up his alley and he'll make it.  That was the case for these cupcakes.  I found this recipe called Cookie Dough Stuffed Cupcakes.  He loves cookie dough ice cream.  He's made Cookie Dough Cheesecake.  I thought he might want to try and make these and he did.

These almost don't qualify as cupcakes.  They are so delicious they could easily fall into the addictive substance catagory.  Definitely, when you make these 24 cupcakes make sure there are 24 people around (including yourself of course) to eat them.  Otherwise you will eat more than one.  No doubt about it.

The recipe can be found here at "Young Married Chick's" blog. 

I found Young Married Chick's blog through a site called Food Gawker.  I was turned on to that site by a friend who was helping me find a foodie blog I'd enjoy.  I really like Food Gawker, because you get to see recipes from many different blogs.  It changes every day.

Red Velvet for Valentine's Day

I decided to make Red Velvet cupcakes, so my kids and I could treat our friends for Valentine's Day.  I don't have a recipe for this and did a search coming up with Paula Deen's Red Velvet Cupcakes.

It looked fairly simple.  I had all the ingredients, but buttermilk.  The recipe surprised me that it only had 1 tsp of cocoa powder.  The batter mixed up easily.

My handy dandy cookie scoop always makes filling cupcake tins so easy.

Into the convection oven they went for 20 minutes.

They baked up perfectly.  No mushroom top to fight with when frosting.

I was told to not beat the batter too much and do not fill the cupcake tins too much for that nice flat top to frost.

I used a large star shaped icing tip to swirl on the frosting.

I figured out that I liked starting from the center and working out in a circular pattern.  Better than starting on the outside and working my way in.  Personal preference.  I thought they looked kind of rose like when I started from the center.

To top things off I used a Wilton heart shaped plastic candy tray to form the chocolate hearts.  So, simple.  Melt Wilton red chocolate in microwave in a plastic bag.  Cut tip off corner of bag.  Pipe melted chocolate into plastic heart shape molds.  Stick tray in freezer for about 15 minutes.  The hearts pop right out.

Everyone has cupcakes to treat their friends tomorrow.

The Cupcake

I found the cutest cupcake pan while at the craft store. I was out shopping for fabric and paper. Dangerous... me... craft store... money. Anyhow I sold all my character cake pans at a yard sale last year. I have teenagers and they've out grown things like Winnie the Pooh. When I saw this I thought how much fun for everyone.

Today I baked the recipe on the card that came with the pan. It's a chocolate pound cake with chocolate butter cream frosting. One needs to be very careful making a delicious cupcake when you have a teenage son in the house!