So, here is the start of the Halloween treats and if I’m being completely honest these were far more stressful then they needed to be. I had a plan of my Halloween bakes so had a rough idea what I was doing. They spider cupcakes seemed pretty simple and I actually wasn’t even going to blog about them because I wasn’t happy with how they turned out. The bats were literally something I made today as I hoped they would make the cupcakes better and get me a better photo. I think the bats are a perfect little treat and the spider cupcakes need more practice. Saying that I’ll still tell you about how I made them. Both the bats and spiders have one thing in common, Oreos.
Let’s start with the cupcakes. So I’d already added some Oreos to the weekly shop so I had everything I needed, or so I thought. I was quite excited to make these cupcakes and even ordered some edible eyes. They were meant to be delivered the day I made these cupcakes and I had faith in that. Unfortunately they eyes didn’t arrive in time so I just decorated them with what I had. For the cupcakes I added 175g butter, sugar, self raising flour, 3 eggs and 1 teaspoon of baking powder to a bowl. I added a couple of drops of vanilla flavouring. I also decided to crush some Oreos up because I’ve never done Oreo flavour cupcakes before. I crushed half a packet of Oreos and the flavour was just right. I mixed the cake batter and then made 16 cupcakes from this recipe. I baked the cupcakes at 175 degrees for 15 minutes.
I left the cupcakes to cool whilst I did some uni work. I let the butter soften a little bit before I started to decorate them. For the buttercream I had a lot of spare buttercream from these cupcakes so you can reduce the recipe if you want. I added 250g butter and 500g icing sugar along with a dash of milk and some vanilla flavouring. I wasn’t really happy with the buttercream and I think that’s where my frustration with these cupcakes started. I smoothed a layer of buttercream on the cupcakes. The decoration only needed some melted chocolate and some Oreos. Despina helped me try and draw the legs, which was harder than it seemed. I think out of the 16 cupcakes maybe 8 of them were good enough. There was a few trial cupcakes that were used. The Oreo was the face/body of the spider. I used some pearl sprinkles for the eyes stuck on with buttercream. I think they would’ve looked so much better with the eyes I was waiting for. For the cupcakes that didn’t make it as spiders I covered them in a sprinkle mix I made. After the Bon Jovi cake, I had a mix of purple, red and black sprinkles. I covered the cupcakes in buttercream and put loads of sprinkles on top. It was really hard to get a photo of these cupcakes to do them justice.
This morning when I came to writing this blog, I wanted to do something else to accompany the cupcakes. I thought I would do some quick Oreo based Halloween treats. Over the past weeks I’ve seen a lot of ideas and these Oreo bats really stood out. They don’t involve any cooking which is great and they are so simple to make for Halloween. You need some Oreos, some melted chocolate and something for the eyes. I split some Oreos in half and they became the wings of the bat. I melted some milk chocolate in a bowl. I laid the wings at an angle on a tray and put some melted chocolate where the Oreo would go on top. I used a little bit of crushed Oreo to hold it up so the wings could stick when the chocolate hardened. I added some melted chocolate on top and smoothed it out. I used my eyes that were meant to go on the spiders. There you have some cute little bat treats. They had already set after 15 minutes, a very easy thing to do at any level of baking.
I think the bats definitely saved this week’s blog for me. The cupcakes tasted amazing and I think I’m certainly going to try them again with some Oreo buttercream. I think it was a good start to the spooky Halloween series and I’m looking forward to the next couple of weeks to see what spooky bakes are conjured up. I hope you have a great week.
Lots of love,
Hannah x
Grandma says very good.