Monstrously Good Cupcakes

A boy and his KitchenAid.

 Since, as I've mentioned before, MiniChef loves monsters more than anything else in the world, it wasn't hard to convince him to pick out a recipe for Halloween week, even if today's isn't based on one specific book. But who am I to say no?

Our district doesn't have school on Halloween for some reason, so we had plenty of time to make sort-of-complicated cupcakes for post-trick-or-treating. If we hadn't had the weekday to bake, we would have made them over the weekend and stuck them in the fridge. The ones we didn't eat on Monday lasted for two more days in the fridge; we took them out an hour or so before eating to let everything come to room temperature. The very last cupcake made an excellent lunchbox dessert on Wednesday.

MiniChef's idea was monster heads that bleed when you bite into them. So, the obvious choice was to make a jam-filled cupcake. When I looked for recipes to adapt, I wanted one with a yellow cupcake that could stand up to raspberry jam. Because I love cream cheese and jam together, I thought a cream cheese frosting would make the perfect pairing. And I was right! These two recipes are perfect together; the tang of the cream cheese nicely offsets the sweetness of the jam.

This recipe makes twelve cupcakes. Since we're a small family and we didn't want to have lots of cupcakes tempting us in addition to Halloween candy, I froze six of them after baking by putting them on a sheet pan and sticking them in the freezer overnight. Then I bagged and tagged them. When we want to eat them (within a few months), I'll put them in the fridge to thaw overnight, and then will proceed with the recipe as written. Or don't fill them and use another frosting! The sky is the limit.

MiniChef chose Twizzlers, Tootsie Rolls, and Jumbo Confetti Sprinkles to create the monstrous faces. Actually, his first choice was candy eyeballs, but go figure, the store was sold out by the day before Halloween. So we drew eyeballs on the sprinkles with food markers. We used piping bags and decorating tips to make "fur": MiniChef used a star tip, and I used a grass tip. Spreading the frosting on with a knife would also be a good choice. Go wild with your decorations; I think candy corn would be an excellent--and seasonally-appropriate--choice, too.

Monstrous Cupcakes
(adapted from Martha Stewart)
1/2 cup (1 stick) unsalted butter, room temperature
1 1/2 cups all-purpose flour
1 1/2 tsp baking powder
3/4 tsp salt
3/4 cup granulated sugar
2 large eggs, room temperature
1 tsp pure vanilla extract
1/2 cup milk
6-12 tsp jam (we used raspberry)

I did:
Preheat oven to 350 degrees.

MiniChef did:
Put liners into a 12-cup cupcake tin. In a medium bowl, whisk together flour, baking powder, and 3/4 teaspoon salt. In a large bowl, using an electric mixer or a stand mixer, beat granulated sugar and butter together until light and fluffy, about five minutes. Beat in eggs, one at a time. Beat in vanilla. Turn mixer to low. Add flour mixture in two parts, alternating with milk.

Divide batter among prepared muffin cups.

Licking the batter is a very important part of baking.
(I get to lick the bowl.)

I did:
Bake for about 20 minutes, or until a toothpick inserted in center of a cupcake comes out clean. Let cupcakes cool in the pan for five minutes. Transfer to a wire rack to cool completely. (You can freeze any cupcakes you don't want to frost at this point.)

Using a small knife, cut a 1-inch-deep cone-shaped piece from the top of each cupcake. Do not throw it away.

MiniChef did:
Fill each hole with 1 teaspoon jam and replace cutout pieces.

Hairy-Scary Frosting*
(Adapted from Martha Stewart)

8 ounces cream cheese, room temperature
8 tablespoons (1 stick) unsalted butter, cut into pieces, room temperature
1 cup confectioners' sugar
1 teaspoon pure vanilla extract
Gel food coloring
Candies of your choice

MiniChef did:
Place cream cheese in a stand mixer**. Turn the mixer on low and soften cream cheese. Add butter one piece at a time, and continue beating until smooth and well blended. Sift confectioners' sugar in, using a sifter or a mesh strainer, and continue beating until smooth. Add vanilla, and stir to combine.

We did together:
Add the food coloring of your choice to create your monstrous colors. We divided our frosting in half, and tinted one bowl green and one bowl purple.

Transfer your frosting to pastry bags and pipe "fur" onto your cupcakes, or apply the frosting with an offset spatula. Decorate with candy to your heart's desire.

*Note: we filled and frosted six cupcakes and put the other six in the freezer. I halved the frosting recipe, and it made the perfect amount for six cupcakes.
** You can do this by hand, using a rubber spatula to soften the cream cheese and a wooden spoon to incorporate the rest of the ingredients. We just love our KitchenAid, and it makes things go so much quicker.

The Quest for Rainbow Cake

The first book that MiniChef picked for our Book-Cook Project was Quest by Aaron Becker. He loves it and its prequel, Journey. (MiniChef "wrote" a sequel called Adventure...and then it turned out there actually is a sequel called Return. We haven't read it yet, but we're excited to!) He says he likes it because "there's a king and they get to draw cool creatures."

Since MiniChef is kind of obsessed with cake competition shows--ok, ok, we're both kind of obsessed with cake competition shows, and we watch them together...a lot--it makes a ton of sense that the first thing he wanted to make was a cake. The wordless book features two children, who we call Penelope and Harold. They each have their own crayon (Harold's is purple, naturally), and in the course of their quest to defeat an evil ruler and return the rightful king to his throne, they collect a rainbow of other crayons, which they use to color their world. 

MiniChef's specific request for this recipe was a rainbow-colored cake to go with the world-saving rainbow. And here's how we did it!

For the Cake
(Adapted from Cook's Illustrated)

1 cup whole milk, room temperature
6 large eggs, room temperature
2 teaspoons vanilla extract
2 1/4 cups cake flour
1 3/4 cups sugar
4 teaspoons baking powder
1 teaspoon salt
12 tablespoons unsalted butter, softened but still cool
Gel food coloring (your choice of colors)
You can use liquid food coloring instead, but gel creates deeper colors with fewer drops, and doesn't change the liquid content of the batter.

(Note: it's important that the eggs and milk are at room temperature, otherwise the batter will separate.)

Here are the steps I did myself before MiniChef joined me:

Separate the eggs--we'll be using only the egg whites. Put the yolks in the fridge to use for another project.

Preheat oven to 350 degrees, and adjust oven rack to the middle position. We're still getting used to having an electric oven, so this step was actually the most difficult! Grease two 9-inch round cake pans, line with parchment, grease again, and flour the pans. (You can also use three 8-inch round cake pans, if that's what you've got.)

My boy loves his...er, our KitchenAid.

Here are the steps we did together:

Pour your egg whites into a 2-cup liquid measuring cup, and mix in the milk and vanilla. 

Put dry ingredients (flour, sugar, baking powder, and salt) into the bowl of a stand mixer fitted with the paddle attachment, and mix on low speed for a few seconds, until just combined. Add the chilled butter one piece at a time, and mix on low for about one minute until you only see pea-sized pieces.

Add half of the milk/egg/vanilla mixture, increase speed to medium-high, and beat for about one minute, until light and fluffy. Turn speed down to medium-low, add remaining milk/egg/vanilla mixture, and mix for about 30 seconds. The batter might look slightly curdled, but that's ok! Don't fret--it's supposed to do that. Give the batter one stir by hand. Let your kid lick the paddle.

Divide batter evenly into six bowls. Set two bowls aside; these will stay white. Mix food coloring into each of the four other bowls to achieve the colors you've chosen. (We wanted red, orange, blue, and green. We experimented with how many drops of food coloring went into each bowl, and kept mixing until we liked the result.)

Decide which colors you want in each layer of cake: there should be two colored batters and one white batter in each. Drop your batters in random tablespoons into your prepared cake pans. Use a knife or skewer to "marble" the batter until the colors are mixed to your liking.

I did this part by myself too, because MiniChef isn't allowed to use the oven yet:

Put the pans in the oven and bake until a toothpick inserted in center comes out clean, about 20-25 minutes (18-22 minutes for 8-inch pans), rotating the pans halfway through baking. Let the cakes cool in the pans on a wire rack for ten minutes. Remove the cakes from the pans, and let cool in the refrigerator for at least 45 minutes. The colder the cake when frosting, the better.

For the Frosting(Adapted from Martha Stewart)

1 cup (2 sticks) unsalted butter, room temperature 6-8 cups confectioners' sugar1/2 cup milk1 teaspoon vanilla extract We did all of this together: Place the butter in the bowl of your electric mixer fitted with the whisk attachment, and cream until smooth and creamy. This will take two-three minutes or more. Look for the butter to lighten in color. With mixer on low, add six cups sugar, the milk, and the vanilla. Mix until light and fluffy. If the frosting isn't your desired consistency, keep adding sugar gradually until it's what you want. I did this part by myself: Frost the cake with your best method. I aspire to Joy the Baker's method of frosting; as it is, I put about 3/4 cup of frosting on the top of the blue/green layer and spread it with a butter knife. Place the second layer on top. Frost the whole cake with a light "crumb coat" and put in the refrigerator for at least 15 minutes. Take cake out of the fridge and frost as thick a layer as you'd like. We did this part together: Toss sprinkles all over the darn place! Here's what MiniChef has to say about the cake: "It was very yummy. I liked the frosting. My favorite part of making it was that we had fun making it. I got to lick the batter!" The cake will last for at least three days in the fridge. You will absolutely have more frosting than you'll need. I recommend storing the leftover frosting in airtight storage, taking it out about a half-hour before you want to use it again, and dunking either pretzels or graham crackers in it.