Wicked Witch Cupcakes

For this fun Halloween project, McCormick and Kitchen Play sent over food coloring and vanilla extract to spark my imagination into proper holiday gear. I think it worked, or I hope it did anyway.

With a bit of adult help, even small kids can make these spooky cupcakes. The cone hats are fragile, so I recommend adults make those first since they’ll need time to dry anyway.

The rest of the decorating, and maybe even the cupcake preparation with some supervision can be handed off to the younger set.

Wicked Witch Cupcakes
It looks like there’s a lot of frosting here and there is, but you’re going to need all of it. Print Recipe

1 package (18 1/4 ounces) chocolate cake mix
1 teaspoon McCormick® Pure Vanilla Extract
24 chocolate wafer cookies
24 ice cream sugar cones
5 (4.25 ounce) tubes black decorating icing
McCormick® Assorted Food Colors
2 containers vanilla frosting
3 (3.75 ounce) packages Rips Whips colored licorice
24 Sour Patch Sour Apple Candies (Found in bulk bin.)
48 brown Sixlets chocolate coated candies (You’ll have to fish them out of a normal package.)
Small round tip & piping bag for eyes, optional
24 plastic spiders, optional
24 Halloween cupcake liners (Michaels is a great place to find them.)

1. One at a time, with the black decorating icing, frost the top of a wafer cookie and the outside of an ice-cream cone. Carefully place the cone on the cookie to make a hat. Set aside to dry for 4 or more hours. Repeat with the rest of the cones and cookies. Keep any remaining black frosting for spider attachment.

2. Meanwhile, prepare cake mix as directed on package for cupcakes, adding vanilla. Bake as directed on package for cupcakes. Cool cupcakes on wire rack.

3. Tint frosting green with 2 parts green food color and 1 part yellow food color until desired color is reached. Frost cupcakes.

4. Using scissors cut the licorice in half. Take 1 of each color and place them around the cupcake for hair. Trim any ends that are too long. Frost the bottom of hats and place them on the cupcakes with enough room to place on faces.

5. Place a small amount of black decorating icing on the bottom of plastic spiders and attach them to hats.

6. Gently set Sixlets eyes and sour candy apple mouths on cupcakes. Place a couple tablespoons of green frosting in a piping bag and dot on eyes.

Makes 24 cupcakes.

Prep Time: 45 minutes
Set time: 4 hours
Cook Time: 20 minutes


McCormick is also sponsoring a wonderful giveaway at Kitchen PLAY. Simply recreate any one recipe from this month’s SideCar Series, post about the experience on your blog and provide a link to your post on Kitchen PLAY to enter. All qualifying bloggers in each course will be entered to win $50 (10 prizes total). The deadline is October 31, 2011. Please review the complete contest rules before entering. Good luck!

Recipe inspired by McCormick’s Wicked Witch Cupcakes. Photography by Laura Flowers.

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Grandma's Pineapple Carrot Cake

Not all special cakes are multi-tiered or fancy looking. Sometimes they come home-style in 9x13 inch cake pans with messy cream cheese frosting like this one from Abby Hicks at Tweedle Dee Design Co.

This pineapple carrot cake is American nostalgia and my personal pick for best tasting carrot cake. It’s got a lot of texture and moisture going on with pineapple, carrots, coconut and walnuts infiltrating the batter. As if that’s not enough, a buttery glaze soaks into the hot cake as soon is its pulled from the oven.

It also has a great story and family history. One than makes me wish I could walk into a New York diner for cup of tea, a slab of cake and conversation with friends.

Here's what Abby had to say, “One of my grandmothers owned a restaurant in New York, which I worked in as a teenager. She had an award-winning recipe for Pineapple Carrot Cake that people would come in for every Thursday. It is the most moist and delish carrot cake I have eaten in my 44 years! The secret to this incredible cake is a buttery toffee sauce that is poured over the cake as it comes out of the hot oven. When it cools and you top with a cream cheese frosting...every bite melts with buttery sweetness.”

After a pitch like that I had to give this a try. Now I'm trying not to eat the whole pan!

Grandma's Pineapple Carrot Cake
Printer Version
Laura’s notes: Like any good fruitcake the longer it sets the better it is. I think at three days this cake is amazing, so don’t be afraid to make it way ahead of time.

Cake
2 cups all-purpose flour
2 teaspoon baking soda
2 teaspoon cinnamon
1/2 teaspoon salt

Sift dry ingredients together and set aside....

3 Eggs
3/4 Cup Oil
3/4 Cup Buttermilk
2 Cups Sugar
2 teaspoon vanilla

Mix well. Add the dry ingredients and mix well.

1 8 0z. can of crushed pineapple
2 cups shredded carrot
1 cup flaked coconut
1 cup chopped nuts

Add pineapple, coconut, carrot and nuts and mix well. Pour into a greased 9" x 13" glass cake pan and bake at 350 degrees for approximately 50 to 60 minutes or until a toothpick comes out clean. Prepare glaze....

Buttery Glaze
1 cup sugar
1/2 teaspoon baking soda
1/2 cup buttermilk
1/4 pound butter
1 tablespoon corn syrup
1 teaspoon vanilla

Combine all ingredients (in at least a 2 quart pot) and boil for 1 minute. Remove cake from oven and while hot, pour glaze over cake. Cool completely. Frost with Cream Cheese Frosting.

Cream Cheese Frosting
1/4 pound butter
1 8oz. package cream cheese
2 teaspoons vanilla
2 cups powdered sugar

Combine butter and cream cheese. Add vanilla, powdered sugar and beat until think and smooth. Frost over cooled cake.

Refrigerate cake until ready to serve.

Recipe via Abby Hicks. Picture by Laura Flowers.

Shortcut Homemade Twinkie Copycats

I couldn’t face producing three batches of Twinkies from scratch for Jesse’s work this week. So I didn’t. Instead, I tweaked Todd Wilber’s pound cake mix version into something more Twinkie-like. What's neat about Todd's version is he made his copycats without a cream canoe pan by wrapping foil around spice jars to created molds. If I didn’t have the pan already, I’d have done things his way.

There were a couple problems with Todd’s recipe. I’m not sure if they’re because I used a nonstick pan instead of foil, but they needed a roll in simple syrup. Without it they weren’t really Twinkies, just pound cakes with filling and strange crusty outsides. I adjusted the cooking time as well, but that’s probably just a difference in baking methods. If you use the foil method they’ll take longer to bake.

If you’re not into shortcut baking, Leslie Bilderback made a fantastic, but complicated Twinkie recipe from scratch. It might be fun to tackle if you have the spare time, or are making just a single batch.

I think sometimes a shortcut is perfectly fine though. Especially for something fun like this. Overall, these little cakes are pretty darn Twinkie-like, not too difficult, and have that cool novelty of being baked at home. I'll be making these again.

Shortcut Homemade Twinkies
Simple Syrup
1 cup granulated sugar
1 cup water

Boil together in a small pot with a lid. Once mixture comes to a boil remove the lid and cook for three more minutes to ensure the sugar is dissolved. Remove from heat and set aside.

Cakes
Crisco for greasing
4 egg whites
1 16-oz box of golden pound cake mix
2/3 cup of water

Pre-heat the oven to 325 degrees Fahrenheit. Grease a cream canoe pan with Crisco. (Butter doesn’t work as well here).

Beat the egg whites until stiff but not a solid mass. In a separate bowl combine the cake mix with water and beat until blended. Then, fold egg whites into the cake with a spatula then beat it with the hand mixer at the end until just combined.

Fill the molds half full of batter. Bake for around 22 to 23 minutes, or until the cakes are lightly golden brown around the edges (but light on top) and a toothpick comes out clean.

Run a toothpick around the cakes to loosen the sides. Dump the hot cakes onto parchment paper. Turn cakes upside down so the bottoms are now on top. Place some of the simple syrup into a wide shallow bowl and immediately roll the tops, sides, and ends of hot Twinkies in the syrup. Try not to get syrup on the bottoms. Fill with cream filling, below.

Repeat the process for second set of cakes. Be sure to grease the pan again.

Cream Filling
2 teaspoons very hot water
1/4 teaspoon salt
2 cups marshmallow cream (or one 7 oz jar)
1/2 cup shortening
1/3 cup powdered sugar
1 teaspoon vanilla extract
1 chopstick

To do the cream filling, first mix the salt into the bowl of hot water, and mix until the salt is dissolved. Let it cool.

Combine the marshmallow cream, shortening, powdered sugar, and vanilla in a bowl and mix, preferably with an electric mixer or stand mixer on high, until fluffy.

Now pour the salt-water solution in and mix.

When the cakes are mainly cool, poke a hole into the bottom in three places like a Twinkie with a narrow ended chopstick. Move the chopstick around inside to make some room for filling. Then stick a pastry bag into the holes and press gently to fill.

Storing “Twinkies”
Store in a wax paper lined covered container for a few hours before serving. Twinkies need time for their outsides to get soft. Twinkies also freeze quite well after filling.

Makes 16 Twinkie Copycats.

Adapted from Todd Wilber from Top Secret Recipes. Picture by Laura Flowers.