Monster Mash

We aren't too Halloweeny at our house. The kids get to dress up, go to a couple of houses and then we head out for pizza. I grew up with Halloween, Jim grew up with pizza....I see the merrit behind both sides, but personally we try to make it not much of a big deal around the house.

With that said, they boys saw Monster Cupcakes in a magazine at their grandma's house and begged for us to make them...sure...sugar isn't really something they get to have a lot in our house and they worked super hard last week helping me clean so lets go for it!

I made a half batch of 2 recipes from The Joy of Baking: chocolate and yellow cupcakes. Also, arm yourself with plenty of chocolate chips, pretzels and air head candies.

I whipped up a batchof her confectioner's frosting..which is pretty much the basic butter, vanilla, powdered sugar and milk recipe except that she beats her's for like 5 min----Amazing! I left some plain, then dyed 2 small bowls of orange and purple, plus filled a little ziplock baggie with green.

First, frost the top with white and then dip the cupcake (pic above) into colored frosting that's been microwaved for 10 seconds, until its a tad runny. You're going for globby and monstery! While you're at it, cut 2 big marshmallows in half and stick onto a pretzel stick...dip half of the marshmallow into the frosting too (again, see above pic under his arm). Word of advice, work on waxed paper so that everything will come unstuck once dried :)



Roll out a piece of air head and then press the back of a butter knife into it for the "tongue" impression. Shove it into the frosting, add they eyes (with chocolate chips dipped in white frosting and then smashed into the marshmallow)...the teeth were mini marshmallows cut in half, but in hindsight you could just cut small pieces of the larger marshmallows!!! (I know, I know...but really we don't go through them and I know they'll be hitting the trash in a month once they're all dried up!)


This little guy was just pretzel sticks broken up and poked into the top of the cupcake...then dipped in melted frosting. The eyes are plain pretzel sticks with a mini marshmallow stuck to the top and chocolate chip smashed in.

Faces only a mother could love!



My personal favorite was the little green guys...which I forgot to take a closer picture of, but you'll get the basic idea: Put a blop of white frosting on the top of a cupcake. Cut a large marshmallow not quite in half, but angled so the the bottom edge will sit flattish on the cake and the top will make the eyeball. With the frosting in a ziplock, I just snipped off an edge of the bag and then made little spikes all around the cake and marshmallow....add a junior mint with a smidge of white frosting to make it stay for the finished eye!

There you go...a lot of work, but super fun! These really aren't very portable, but makes a fun activity on a cold fall night!


After all of this (cupcakes from scratch, homemade frosting, cutting candy...) when I told the boys that they could eat their creations---they replied...Ummmm, na. But thanks mom, this was fun! The two white ones were for stick in the mud daddy, who I know wouldn't have appreciated all the extra decoration ;)

This morning I found a monster massacare in the kitchen after our golden retriever pulled the pan from the top of the stove! Well, at least someone got to enjoy them!

I'm linking up to Jennifer at Hope Studios----head on over, there's lots of Cute stuff this Week!!!