Creeptastic Zombie Hand Cupcakes

I have another grody Halloween post for you guys today.

BWAHAHAHAhahaha…haha..ha…h…ahem.

Sorry about the evil laugh. Too much, right? Yeah. I’ll try not to let it happen again.

So. A few weeks ago, I had a Bake It Pretty order delivered to me while I was at my sister’s house, and they gave me a little free gift with my order.

I’m cool like that.

What? They give those to everyone?

Oh.

Right. Well…anyway. My little free gift was a small assortment of Halloween cupcake picks; cute little bats, a couple of funny looking skulls, some zombie hands.

I’ve seen the zombie hand cupcake picks all over. People have made some really cute graveyard cupcakes with a little Oreo “dirt” and some cookie “tombstones.” My particular faves are from my friend Kristan, the Cookbook Queen, who made adorbz little graves out of mini loaf pans.

Who would have thought a bloody zombie hand reaching through the dirt from it’s grave could be so cute?

Well, when I first saw the picks in my assortment, I was like, “Jackpot! Cute picks. Yay!” But I had no intention of blogging anything with them…cause they’d already been done. And done well.

Then my sister said, “Ohmigosh! Wouldn’t it be awesome if they were holding something?!”

Yeah. She’s pretty much a genius like that.

The next thing I knew, I had ordered more zombie picks from amazon (I had only gotten two in my assortment and Bake It Pretty was sold out), and we had settled on cake bite body parts as being the most appropriate thing for the hands to be holding.

You know…skulls. Eyeballs. Braaaaaaiiiiiiiiiiinnnnnnnzzzzz.

I didn’t stray far from what works when it came to the cakes: cupcakes with buttercream frosting and crushed Oreos for dirt. Easy. Fast. Soooo yummy.

For the cake bites, I went with good old red velvet. I mean, it makes sense, right?

Bake your cake as usual, then, once it’s cooled, break it up into pretty fine crumbs.

I ended up making a basic 9×13-inch, or 2 8-inch round, size cake recipe. I baked half of it in an 8-inch round cake pan, and I made the other half into the cupcakes. I ended up with 10 cupcakes, and 16 cake bites. If you need more treats, make a double batch of cake. Bake one in a 9×13-inch cake pan, for the bites, and bake the rest as cupcakes, which should give you 24. You should get about 36 cake bites out of a full cake.

Once the cake is crumbled, stir in frosting. One whole recipe (16 ounces) per whole cake (so I used half of a recipe).

You can actually use less, if you want to. Just use as much as you need to bind the cake crumbs together.

Chill the mixture for an hour or two, or overnight.

Once chilled, shape your cake bites. I used the picks as a guide for how big to make mine, and ended up making 1.5 ounce (40 gram) bites.

Obviously, the eyeballs will just be round balls.

For the brains, I started with a regular ball, like the eyeballs, then I made it more egg shaped. Next, I pressed down gently on the top of the bite to flatten it slightly. Finally, I used my finger to press gently along the center of the bite, lengthwise, to give my brains two hemispheres.

They’re kinda gross looking.

For the skulls, I started out with a round ball again and just elongated it slightly, and made the top half larger. Easy peasy.

After the bites are shaped, chill them in the freezer for about 15 minutes.

Once chilled, it’s time to coat these little suckers in some chocolate.

The eyeballs and skulls were simple, since they’re both white; I just dipped them in melted white chocolate (which I vastly prefer to candy melts). Even though I wasn’t going to be leaving the bites on sticks, I used them for dipping because it is so much neater and easier.

Dip the end of the stick into the melted chocolate and insert it into the cake bite. Now, just dip the cake bites and tap off the extra chocolate before placing the sticks into styrofoam so the chocolate can harden. Once the candy has hardened, the bites can be gently pulled off of the sticks.

The brains required a little color, so I added a couple of black and a couple of red candy melts to my already melted white chocolate. I dipped the brains just like I did the eyeballs and skulls, and let them set up.

Once they hardened, I transferred my brain matter gray chocolate to a decorating bag fitted with a small writing tip. I squiggled a small amount of the chocolate onto each side of the brain, leaving parts of it uncovered, and set them aside again to harden. Once they were set up, I squiggled more chocolate over the first squiggles to give my brains more matter.

If you try to put too much on at once, the chocolate will all melt together, and you lose the definition of the squiggles.

I think they turned out pretty cool and disgusting, if I do say so myself.

Once the skulls were hardened, I used a black food writer to draw a fun face onto them.

As for the eyeballs, I stuck a plain M&M onto each one while the chocolate was still soft. Once they had set up, I drew a pupil on the M&Ms with my black food writer, then used a red one to draw veins on.

If you don’t want to make cupcakes, these are excellent served up on little platter with tasting forks in them.

BWAHA…ahem.

Oops.

Sorry. I forgot. Not ‘sposed to do that.

I finished my cupcakes off with some cute wrappers from Duff that I got at Michaels for about a buck on clearance. They’re a perfect little graveyard scene for my zombies, so I skipped the cookie tombstones.

I love how kinda cute, but totally gross these are. It helps that they were super easy, really fun, and totally delicious. You can make each part of these separately and in advance. I took my time making these over three days, but you can certainly get them done all in one day (just a few hours of work), if you want to.

Creeptastic Zombie Cupcakes
Makes 10 cupcakes, with cake bite toppers, and an additional 6 cake bites

1 recipe cake (any flavor)
1 recipe frosting (any flavor)
white chocolate or candy melts
food writers

Follow instructions above for baking and assembly.