Brain Food

If you want to be brain healthy and extra smart: I wouldn't recommend eating these! 

Rich chocolate cake with a Swiss meringue buttercream "brain".  

The cupcake sleeves were traced onto black scapbooking paper then I made signs and glued them on.  The crinkle cut at the top of the cupcake sleeve adds a fun touch.  

The frosting seemed like it had too many air holes.  I'm not sure why that happened.  

The recipe recommended that it be whipped for a long time to insure that the bubbles were out.  

I whipped it but still . . .

I  borrowed most of the names from Martha Stewart.  But I came up with a few as well.  

The lame ones are likely mine.  :)

 We had: Smart T Pants, Sir Thinks-a-Lot, Albert Mindstein, Intell E Gent, Ima Wiseman, Clever Clive, Mr. Know-it-All, Al Weighs Right, Whitt E. Banter, Mrs. Anne Sirs, Ms. Bright Brain, and Smart Alec, which I accidentally typed as SNart Alec.  Nice, right?

Brains were made by piping a D shape on one half of the brain then filing in the D with squiggly brain matter.  Repeat on the other side.

The frosting was tinted grey (like grey matter) but I think I could have made it even more grey; looks too white. 

Brains actually took some piping practice.  I had the wrong size piping tip and no luxury to go to the store to buy the right one; one kiddo sleeping and one all up in my business.  I could have used the good ol' fashioned ziploc but the holes I cut in the corner of the bag tend to have an edge to them; no good.  

Some of the brains were so poorly done that I scraped them off and tried again.  Eventually I got tired and called it "good enough."  

I've included a jpg image of the cupcake sleeve and the brain tags.  Save the image in your files then open it up on Word or whatever.  The brain tags should each be about 1.5 inches wide.  The sleeves should be stretched to 9.25 inches.  Print out the sleeve, trace it on cardstock or chipboard and use the more firm template as your stencil.  

Polka Dot in B&W

These cupcakes were decorated in a black and white theme but you should also know that the pictures are posted in black and white to add punch to the contrasting colors. 

I love the wrappers.  They gave the otherwise fun-looking cakes a fancier touch.  

I made a gluten-free chocolate cake and filled each cupcake with a dairy-free ganache.

I used Bob's Red Mill "Gluten Free All Purpose Flour" when the recipe called for flour.  

I chose this flour for the cupcakes because it creates a softer, more gooey cupcake.

 

 I usually fill my cupcakes with a piping bag and small tip but the squeeze bottle works great too.  

In fact, I may venture to say that it works better! 

The ganache shouldn't be hot when piping into the cupcake centers.  I made the ganache, waited only until it was room temp then filled the cakes.  A little bit oozed out of the middle so I let it cool and harden slightly before removing the little mounds of extra ganache off the top of the ones I frosted white.

Picture on the left is the original, picture on the right is in greyscale. 

Not much different; just enough to make it pop.  

Spider Season

These sad little cupcakes are the second set I made this morning.  The first set was the candy corn.

The original idea was to make a cupcake with white frosting/black web and another with black frosting/white web.  Apparently it's difficult to find black frosting.  

The ball is a pretzel m&m.  They're very crunchy so I'm hoping it will add a little to the gross factor.  

I'm sure eating a real spider would be crunchy too . . .

 The kids were very interested in the process.  Maci chose to make red spiders when she grabbed a ball and put it on the cupcake.   The tray looks very bland without the black paper underneath.  

Ideally, we would have alternated spider and web but the kids really wanted more spiders.  

Jayden was actually the mastermind behind the spiders.  I just used one ball and added 8 legs.  

He insisted that we needed another ball for the head.  I told him I didn't remember spiders having 2 segments so he sang a little song for me,
 "Did you ever see a spider, a spider, a spider?  Did you ever see a spider with TWO body parts?"

I'm glad he insisted, it looks WAY better with the head.  

I can't seem to get a good web.  This doesn't look like Martha's webs. 

 I need to do some more research and figure out how it's done.