I love Halloween. Not the dressing up part, but the food. There is so much inspiration to be found for all kinds of drinks, cookies, and of course, cakes. I have had my eye on monster cupcakes for a while, as they look great but are fairly quick to complete.
I made a batch of vanilla cupcakes using a victoria sponge recipe, and then a traditional buttercream for the monstery-ness. It took a mix of 8oz butter and 16oz icing sugar (plus the cocoa and food colour for the different monsters) to do these 12 cakes, with a little left over.
The first monsters I did were yellow ones (vanilla), using what is called a grass tip. The second lot were brown (chocolate), and I used a star tip. I also have an icing syringe, which is much easier on my hands than using a piping bag.
I gave each cupcake a base coat of buttercream, before adding the first layer of fur, starting from the middle.
Then I did a second layer of fur, and because of the thickness in the middle, the monster gained its body.
For the brown monsters I changed to the star tip to make the fur. The more pressure you apply, and the slower you move, the thicker the icing comes out. I went for making the fur a bit thicker, to avoid making a big body of icing in the middle. Again each cupcake got a base coat of buttercream, then the lines of fur.
I just went round these cupcakes once with the icing, so they are a bit flatter.
After fur, came the eyes. For these, I just rolled balls of sugarpaste, which I left for a few minutes just to skin over, so they would be less likely to squash when I touched them. I have also seen them done with marshmallows or white chocolate buttons as eyes rather than sugarpaste. To make the pupils, I made an indentation with a thick straw. I did this to give me a guide for where to paint, but I also liked the look it gave to the eye balls, as the middle stood out a little. I used some edible paint from rainbow dust for the colours, but you could just use food dye and alcohol to make the paint or use more sugarpaste. you can see some shiney spots on the pink eyes – this is where i used a little vodka to clear up some smudges, but it dries away fairly quickly.
The blue eyes were rounded so just sat on top of the monsters. For the pink ones which more disc like, I used some spaghetti for support, putting it into the cupcake first and then putting the eyes on top.
And hey presto that was my little monster family made and ready to be eaten as well! Since monsters are imaginary, and unique, you can use any piping tip you want to make the fur, and it doesn’t matter if the fur is messy or the eyes are squint, so it is a great project to have a go at!
A Kimbo Cake 