Thursday, October 16, 2008

Blog Party #39 - Gross Anatomy - Eyeball Mini Cakes & Vampire's Blood Cocktail


Stephanie from Dispensing Happiness is holding another Blog Party this month, with the theme of Gross Anatomy. Bring scary anatomically-themed finger food and a beverage to join the party.

For my finger food, I have brought eyeball mini cakes - little gory red velvet cakes topped with a bloodshot Koolmint eyeball.

To make the cakes, I halved Gail Wagman's recipe for July 4th Red Velvet Cupcakes from Cupcakes Galore. The recipe is as follows:

150g plain flour
1 tablespoon cocoa powder
1 teaspoon baking powder
1/2 teaspoon bicarbonate of soda
pinch of salt
65g butter, softened
150g sugar
1 egg
1/2 teaspoon vanilla extract
1/2 teaspoon white vinegar
1/2 tablespoon red food colouring
120ml buttermilk

Preheat your oven to 180 degrees Celsius, and spray 2 x 12 hole mini muffin pans with cooking oil.

Sift the dry ingredients together into a bowl and set aside.

Beat the butter and sugar together using an electric mixer until "creamed", then beat in the egg. Add the vinegar, vanilla and food colouring and mix well.

Add the flour mixture and buttermilk alternately, beating well between each addition.

Put a heaped teaspoonful of batter into each muffin tin hole (I had some batter left over which I made into standard sized cupcakes), then bake the cakes in the preheated oven for around 15 minutes. Remove the cooked cakes from the oven and cool on a wire rack.

To make the eyeballs, I drew pupils and veins on Koolmints using edible food colouring pens. I then iced the cakes with water icing to "glue" the eyeballs onto their gory red backdrop.


For my beverage, I have brought a Vampire's Blood Cocktail (aka a Kir Royale). Pour 15ml of Creme de Cassis into a champagne flute, and top it up with sparkling dry wine.


I am looking forward to the party - thanks Steph!!

14 comments:

Finla said...

Love that scary cop cake, i was the same book, should check out some scary recipe :-)

Big Boys Oven said...

looks really awesomely good!

Rosie said...

I love your eyeball cupcakes and fang-tastic Vampire's Blood Cocktail :)

Rosie x

adele said...

Heh. Love the cupcakes - I've been toying with the idea of having a Halloween dinner (I think I just want an excuse to serve brains) and those would make a fun dessert.

Ivy said...

The eye balls look so real. Everyday I learn something new. There is a pen you can write on food? Wow!!

Cakelaw said...

Hi Happy Cook, look forward to see what you come up with.

Thanks for sropping by Big Boys - these cakes are not usually my style, but fun for a change.

LOL Rosie - thanks.

Hi Adeele, brains and eyeballs - quite a feast!

Hi Ivy, yep, you can buy pens that contain food colouring so you can write on food. I bought my first couple at Jane Asher's Sugarcraft in London, but they now have them at the Cake Deco shop here. It beats piping for certain uses!

Dee said...

What a cool idea! I thought you bought eyeballs; am impressed with your creativity :)

Cakelaw said...

Thanks Dee - but after 24 of them, you get really sick of it.

Anonymous said...

S-C-A-R-y !! Happy Halloween!!

Anonymous said...

Oooh great minds think alike! I'm planning on doing some eyeball cupcakes too for Halloween. Yours look great! :)

The Blonde Duck said...

That's such a cool idea! They really do look like they're staring up at you.

Oh, and I LOVE the oatmeal cranberry pumpkin bread!

Emily said...

Haha, the blog party sounds fun! You always know about all the events going on. I should probably participate more.

The cupcakes look spoooooky.
Whooooooo! *Ghost noises*

The Caked Crusader said...

Love the last photo with all the eyeballs on the plate in the background - made me laugh out loud!

Cakelaw said...

LOL Maryann - Happy Halloween to you too!

Hi Lorraine - can't wait to see what you come up with.

Thanks Blonde Duck - someone at work made a remark about them being creepy, but that was kind of the idea!

Thanks Em. I do a poor job of keeping up with all the events - my mind goes all fuzzy just thinking about them all.

Thanks Crusader - I wanted to show the cocktail in context, so I thought that leaving the cakes in the background would help.