"Halloween Junky Orchestra" Chocolate and vanilla cupcakes

LALALALALA HALLOWEEN PARTY~

LALALALALA LET’S TRICK OR TREAT~

Five seconds of chorus.

Humming it ALL.DAY.LONG.

Seriously guys. Is there a safe way to get this song out of your mind for a second? WOW, possibly the most addictive song Vamps/Hyde have ever made, including Revolution with “Bang on, stomp everybody”.

We must admit the song is not specially original, it’s really typical halloween music, it reminds me to a carnival freak show concept. But I honestly don’t care about originality in this particular case, I love the chorus and this song is my new Halloween anthem, like Hurry Xmas is my number one Christmas song.

The pv is finally out, and it’s AWESOME. Great costumes. An award for Anna Tshuchiya’s impersonation of Medusa, and the lovely Kanon Wakeshima and Hyde together in the same pv… come on, you got to love that.

About Hyde’s costume… Well, in the first Halloween party it was a… demon-ish school girl? then Corpse Bride, Sally, Alice, and the last one… the gothic lolita blondie girl? God bless crossdressed Hyde in Halloween. This year’s costume is a more manly and free version of a vampire, but I love the hat! And the hat is on sale. Damn you Vamps goods.

I think I’m going to copy his style for this year’s Halloween ;) But for now I decided to make this cupcakes inspired by his costume.

Let’s trick or treat!

“HALLOWEEN JUNKY ORCHESTRA” CHOCOLATE AND VANILLA CUPCAKES

For the cupcakes (10 cupcakes):

- 140 gr. (2/3 cups) white sugar

- 120 gr. (1 cup) flour

- 120 gr. (1/2 cups) butter

- 2 large eggs

- 3 tablespoons powdered cocoa

- 1 teaspoon baking powder

- 1 teaspoon vanilla extract

- 60 ml. milk

For the syrup:

- 50 gr. (1/4 cups) white sugar 

- 50 ml. water 

- 1 tablespoon liquor

For the buttercream:

- 250 gr. /1 + ¼ cups) room temperature butter

- 325 gr. /2 + ½ cups) powdered sugar

- 1 teaspoon vanilla extract 

- 2-3 tablespoon milk

For the decorations:

- 250 gr. black fondant (it’s better if you buy black fondant instead of dying white fondant

- 100 gr. white fondant

- Red and black food coloring

- Strawberry syrup

- Chocolate syrup

STEP ONE: Chocolate cupcakes

This recipe makes about 10 cupcakes.

Preheat the oven to 160ºC (320ºF). Line a 12 tin cupcake tin with 12 cupcake cases.

In a small bowl, mix the milk and the vanilla extract, and set aside. In a larger bowl, combine the flour (sifted), the powdered cocoa (aslo sifted) and the baking powder.

In another bowl, beat the sugar and butter together until smooth and creamy. Add the eggs, one at a time, beating well after each addition.

Add the flour and powdered cocoa mixture, and finally the milk. With each addition, beat until the ingredients are incorporated but do not over beat or you will get bubbles in your batter.

Carefully spoon the batter into the cupcake cases, filling them about 2/3 full.

Bake for 25-28 minutes (with the rack on the center of the oven) or until a cake tester inserted into the center of the cupcake comes out clean.

Get the cupcakes out of the oven and let them cool in a rack.

STEP 2: The syrup

It’s better if you make the syrup while the cupcakes are still in the oven, because you will need to use it while the cupcakes are still warm.

In a saucepan, heat the sugar and the water together, stirring until the sugar dissolves. Then add the liquor. I used a tablespoon of Bailey’s, but you can use any kind of liquor. If you don’t want to use alcohol you can use vanilla extract or lemon juice.

When it boils, remove it from the heat and let it cool for a bit.

When the cupcakes are out of the oven and cooling on the rack, pinch the surface of each cupcake several times with a toothpick and brush them with the syrup, using a pastry brush. The syrup keeps the cupcakes moist.

When the cupcakes are completely cool you can start to decorate them with the buttercream.

STEP 3: The buttercream

In a large bowl, cream the butter. It’s important to use room temperature butter, if it’s too cold it would be difficult to cream it.

Add the milk and the vanilla first, and slowly add half the powdered sugar, sifted (very important! Powdered sugar usually has lumps).

Put the electric mixer, or stand mixer, in low speed. Cover the bowl to prevent the powdered sugar to fly all over the room. My little trick is to put the bowl in a plastic bag (like in the picture). It makes the task less messy ;)

Mix on slow speed for about one minute and then add the other half of the powdered sugar. Increase the speed to medium-high and mix for another three minutes. The buttercream will have the right consistency when it’s creamy but firm, like ice cream.

Put the buttercream in a piping bag with any piping tip youn want and decorate them. If you want yours to look like mine, I used Wilton piping tip 1M to pipe on the swirl. I draw a spiral, from outside to inside, it creates the peak effect and makes it look like an ice cream ;)

STEP 4: Skull hats!

For the decorations we are using fondant.

First of all, a kind warning: The only way to get truly black fondant is to buy it. You might try to dye it with food coloring, but you will never get a truly black fondant, and if you add too much food coloring to it the flavour and the texture will be a little bit unpleasant. You can do it with a small batch that is big enough for eyes and noses and tiny decorations but it will be troublesome to do it with the amount of fondant we are using here.

Also, the brand is important! not every fondant tastes the same, it’s better if you use a good quality brand. I use “Funcakes” vanilla fondant, it’s really good ;)

Ok, let’s start with the hats. You need to model four pieces for each hat: the crown, the brim and the bat wings. I used a toothpick to give a little bit of texture to the bat wings. You can glue the pieces together with a little bit of water.

Once the hats are done, let’s begin with the skulls! And not just regular skulls, but pirate skulls, with bones behind them .__. Hyde is dangerously obsessed with all the pirate-related stuff.

I modelled every bone separatedly and then glued the skull. Finally, I glued the skull and bones combo to the hat (using water, as usual)

The last step is to draw the red eyes and black nose to the skulls. You can use black and red fondant to make little pieces, but I tried a much simpler tecniche: painting with food coloring. Mix a few drops of food coloring (red and black, separatedly) with the same amount of drops of water or alcohol. Paint the red eyes first and then clean the brush well, and paint the black noses.

Let the fondant to dry and harden a little bit.

STEP 5: Decorating.

To finish the decoration we will use strawberry and chocolate syrup! It matches the vanilla buttercream very well ;)

With the chocolate syrup, draw a “XIII” in a side of the cupcake. Yes, like the “XIII” that is drawn in hyde’s chest ;) To be honest, I think hyde’s chest would make a better canvas than a cupcake but he wasn’t available soooo… cupcakes it is. Ehem, ok, I added syrup to the tip of a tootpick to draw it, because I wanted it more like “carved” in the buttercream rather than “drawn”, if you know what I mean.

Also, let’s add a vampire concept to the cupcakes with a little bit of strawberry syrup imitating blood. Place the hats on each cupcake and it’s done! I celebrated Halloween early with this cupcakes because I wanted the recipe to be ready on time for you guys to read it and try it. I might repeat it when the day comes. Cupcakes will be my damnation!