A Spooky Twist: Cupcakes with "Boo" Sugar Letters

September 19, 2020
Chocolate Cupcakes with Raspberry Curd
Topped with Passion Fruit Butter Cream and Caramel Letters
Pg. 191
Sean and Logan, Season 2
39 down…60 to go!

This recipe was not intended to be a spooky creation, but I was invited to participate in an Instagram collab by one of my new internet friends, Sam (The amazing people I’ve met in the food community since starting this journey has been the absolute best part of it all). I figured, why not kill two birds with one stone? So I picked out this recipe from the dessert section of the MasterChef Junior Cookbook and decided to make it spook-tacular.

I am really happy with how it all came together, but boy did I have to work for it! Sean and Logan at least got to go at it as a team. I, on the other hand, had to do it solo. It all took just under three hours, but was worth it!

I’ve said it at least a thousand times by now, I am not much of a baker. With that being said, somehow I knocked this one out of the park (I know it’s discouraged to toot your own horn… but… toot toot!) The chocolate cupcakes came out great, despite having to take a lot longer to cook than the recipe instructed. I made the passion fruit puree from scratch, relying only on my instincts, since I couldn’t find it pre-made at any of my local grocery stores. I think doing that made the buttercream frosting even better. I’ve never piped frosting before, but I’d say I did a pretty good job for a newbie!

I’m not sure my curd came out the way it was supposed to, as I had never made curd before and have nothing to compare it to. The flour mixture didn’t blend well with the raspberries so it ended up being lumpy. I put it through a fine mesh colander and used the back end of a spoon to get the lumps to break up. Surprisingly, it worked! I had also never made caramel before, let alone shape it into letters. The instructions were to make decorative swirls, but I wanted it to be more Halloween-y (and I was not about to attempt spider webs haha). There were a lot of ugly “b’s” and “o’s” but I only needed a few good ones, and I got em’!

I topped the cupcakes with decorative murder weapons I found at Kroger, but I knew I wanted to add another spooky element to them. That’s when I came up with the idea of adding blood (insert evil laugh here). I didn’t have a concrete plan when I started baking, which is a sign that I’m really growing in the kitchen because I’m now able to create something out of nowhere as inspiration hits. I was going though my very small collection of baking tools and found some food paint that my mom put in my birthday box this year. I picked the strawberry flavor, thinned it a bit with water, and added a couple drops of red food coloring to give it that bright red blood color. I’m so happy with how it turned out!

Here was the best part: the beau and I did not need to eat all of these cupcakes ourselves so I took the rest to work with me. I currently work part-time at a restaurant, and I gave some of the cooks first pick because they always feed me when I work. A few minutes later, the head chef came up to me and asked, “Have you ever been to Anything Bundt Cakes?” I replied, “No, I’ve heard of it and always wanted to go, but haven’t yet.” Then he knocked me off my feet by saying, “Oh, well your cupcake was even better than their stuff, and I LOVE them.” It was such a huge compliment, and totally made my three hours of work worth it!