Eyeball Cupcake Recipe

You'll have to forgive me this continuing theme this week. To those new to the site, I usually alternate a cooking story with a restaurant review but this week I'm taken by Halloween. Utterly besotted by it in fact. Halloween along with Christmas are my favourite holidays of the year. So I hope you'll forgive the onslaught of Hallowe'en themed food. I promise you that as soon as the clock strikes midnight on Hallowe'en we'll return back to "normal" (whatever that may have been for me).

The idea is from Claire Crespo's Hey There Cupcake! book, the book for all mad and wonderful cupcake decorating ideas. To avoid having a complete breakdown, I made these ahead of time so I needed a dense and moist cake that would last a few days. I used a white chocolate mud cake and at my husband's suggestion, some red food colouring to simulate the red veins in an eyeball or blood spatter (I blame my Dexter addiction).

The first lot I made wasn't quite risen enough as I filled it 2/3 of the way full. I found that filling it 3/4 of the way up with only a few millimetres to spare at the top actually worked better. The recipe is from the Crabapple bakery's White chocolate mud recipe although the recipe below makes 14 suitably domed cupcakes. The domed cupcakes are what you really need for the eyeball to take full effect. And let me wish you a very spooky Halloween coming up this Friday!

Eyeball cupcakes

Makes 14 domed cucpakes

• 2 cups/300g/10.6ozs plain flour

• 1 1/2 teaspoons baking powder

• 250g/8.8ozs butter, chopped

• 1 cup/250ml/8.8flozs milk

• 1 cup/220g/7.7ozs caster or superfine sugar

• 150g/5ozs white chocolate, chopped

• 2 eggs, whisked

• 2 teaspoons vanilla extract

• Red food colouring

To decorate:

• White fondant icing

• Red tube icing with a small plain tip

• Black tube icing with a small plain tip

• Lifesaver lollies in green (or whatever colours you'd like)

Step 1 - Preheat oven to 160C/320F. Line a cupcake tray with liners.

Step 2 - Place flour and baking powder together into a large bowl. Make a well in the centre. Set aside.

Step 3 - Put butter, milk, castor sugar and white chocolate into a saucepan on low heat. Stir continuously until the chocolate has melted and sugar has dissolved. Remove from the heat and cool.

Step 4 - Add the eggs and vanilla extract into the cooled chocolate mixture. Pour this mixture into the well in the flour and fold together until well combined in four or five lots to reduce the amount of lumps. You may find small lumps of flour with this amount of batter, try and get rid of these as much as you can.

Step 5 - Pour mix into a measuring jug with a spout and , pour into the cupcake pan to fill 3/4 full with only 3-4mm to spare at the top. Bake for 30  minutes or until a fine skewer inserted comes out clean. Allow to cool in tin for 5 minutes before turning out to cool

Recipe adapted from the Crabapple Cupcake book

To decorate:

Step 1 - Roll out fondant and cut using a cookie cutter to fit the top of the cupcake. Brush top of cupcake with jam and carefully place fondant on top.

Step 2 - With the red icing, pipe veins in a zig zag pattern starting from the centre radiating outwards.

Step 3 - Place lifesaver lolly in the centre and fill in centre with black icing.