When I saw Shelly’s awesome skeleton cupcakes a couple of weeks ago, I knew that I had to try my hand at them, too. They were just too cute to resist!
Sadly, my skeletons did not come out quite as nicely as hers. Hubs said they looked like sunken Michelin Men…hence the blog title.
My cupcakes started out well enough – I used box mixes this time (I’m gonna have to change my silly tag line, huh?) – one white cake mix, which I colored orange and one triple chocolate cake mix. I swirled the batters together in the cupcake liners for a nice halloween black ‘n’ orange display:
Then I made a batch of Italian Meringue Buttercream and divided it in half. To half the batch I added melted bittersweet chocolate, and the other half got vanilla extract and orange food coloring. Then I frosted and sprinkled the cupcakes. This is where I messed up the most – Shelly’s cupcakes were frosted really tall, so her skeletons didn’t look stubby like mine. And she bought her chocolate covered pretzels, but I couldn’t find any, so I made them….hence the much more…uh….”rustic” look you see mine sporting.
I thought that I had a black food marker, but it turns out I had every color of the rainbow. Which does not include black. So I used melted chocolate chips and a toothpick to “draw” my skeleton’s faces. Making them much more…uh….”homely.” I did have one improvement for Shelly’s method, though – I found that using mini marshmallows in between the pretzels made a much better support than frosting. So there’s that!
My sister-in-law Nina Christina came over and made these guys with me, so even though they didn’t turn out exactly…uh….”magazine-worthy”, we DID have a lot of fun building cupcakes together. And at the end of the day, fun is what a cupcake should be all about anyway, right?
Bonding over baking. It works for me! (I can’t get the button to work for me, though – so go here to check out what’s workin for the rest of the bloggy world this Wednesday: We Are THAT Family: Works For Me Wednesday!)
Have fun!
Becki
{ 6 comments… read them below or add one }
You are too hard on yourself. Not all skeletons are tall, just like people there are some short *stubby* ones too and I think your cupcakes are cute! Main thing, you had fun with a friend making them. Thanks for sharing.
Getting all ready to take the little ones trick-or-treating this weekend?!
We’re just gonna hand out candy again this year, but yep! We’ve got our lion and tiger costumes ready and we’ve been practicing our GRRRRRs for weeks! 🙂
I love your idea of the mini marshmallows in between! That would have helped me! Great job 🙂
Scary stuff! I’m sure you’re skeleton cup-cakes rattled a bone or two 🙂 And about the height of the skeletons – well, not everyone who dies and goes to heaven has a perfectly skeletal figure!
I’d eat it.
Hah! They WERE super yummy. Even their messy little skeleton bodies. YUMYUMYUM.