Yes, Halloween is all about candy, and I’m psyching myself up to sit on my stoop for hours tomorrow passing out Milky Ways and M&M’S to the neighborhood zombies and trolls.  (Unless I am bitten by a vampire, I plan to hoard the Reese’s Cups for myself, btw.)  Every year, though, I force myself to make Halloween cupcakes in an effort to use up my ghost cupcake liners and my orange and black sprinkes. I think I have one year left on the liners, but probably ten on the sprinkles…maybe I should “accidentally” spill them!

I only just now realized that you can’t really even see the actual cupcake in this photo…my bad…but they look, you know, like cupcakes.  I’ve made this recipe a couple of times now because it real flavor from the sour cream and vanilla.  Also, they are soft and moist, but they’re sturdy…they don’t have a messy, fall-to-pieces-when-you-bite-them crumb.  I think they’d make perfect birthday cupcakes.  When I make cupcakes, I often use them as an excuse to clear out the bits and pieces from the fridge, and the frosting here is just a little leftover dark chocolate ganache.

I’m kepping this short and sweet because a car alarm has been going off outside my window for the past fifteen minutes. Ahh, city living…I can hardly hear myself think.  Happy Halloween!

Sour Cream Cupcakes- makes about 18
from a recipe by Anne Burrell

Steph’s Note:  The original recipe claims this makes 12 cupcakes…maybe that’s for a jumbo tin(?), because it really yields about 18 standard size cupcakes.  Here, I made a 1/3 recipe and got six.

2 cups all-purpose flour
2 teaspoons baking powder
pinch salt
1 1/2 sticks unsalted butter at room temperature
1 1/2 cups sugar
3 eggs
1 1/2 teaspoons vanilla extract
1/2 cup milk
3/4 cup sour cream

-Preheat the oven to 350 degrees F.  Line a muffin tin with paper cups.

-Combine the flour, baking powder and salt in a large bowl and set aside.

-In the bowl of a stand mixer, use the paddle attachment, beat the butter and sugar together until they are light and fluffy.  Turn the mixer off and scrape down the sides of the bowl.

-Beat in the eggs, one at a time.  Slowly add the vanilla, milk and sour cream.  Scrape down the sides of the bowl, as needed.  With the mixer on medium speed, gradually mix in the flour.

-Fill the prepared muffin cups about 2/3 of the way, dividing the batter evenly among the lined cups.

-Put in the preheated oven and bake for about 20-22 minutes.  Rotate the tin about halfway through.

-The cupcakes are done when a toothpick comes out clean when inserted into the middle of a cake.  Remove from the oven and let cool completely on a wire rack, then frost and decorate.

I don’t equate cupcakes with Halloween, but every year I do whip up a batch to celebrate the day (and possibly come one step closer to using up my never-ending jar of  orange and black sprinkles).  Last year they were vanilla, this year they’re chocolate.  I’d say that I’ve been a little choco-deprived lately, as the last true chocolate treat I made here was back in August…but that would be a total lie, since all week I’ve been pillaging the stash of Reese’s and Kit Kats that I supposedly bought for the neighborhood children!

Really, I’ve been wanting to make Martha Stewart’s One-Bowl Chocolate Cupcakes for ages…a good friend told me it’s the recipe she always makes for her kids.  For something so easy (you go from zero to cake in about 25 minutes), they are surprisingly good.  Perfectly moist, not too crumbly (cupcakes that fall to pieces when you unwrap them tick me off) and a fast chocolate fix.

The frosting was just a quickie, no measurements, cream cheese frosting with enough matcha powder added to look the color of Frankenstein’s face, or maybe pond scum.   Gruesome, as my grandmother would say (not to mention a little too strong on the matcha).  Happy Halloween!!

One-Bowl Chocolate Cupcakes- makes about 18
adapted from marthastewart.com

Steph’s Note: Don’t worry if your batter seems a little loose or runny…it’ll still become cake in the oven!

3/4 cup unsweetened cocoa powder
1 1/2 cups all-purpose flour
1 1/2 cups sugar
1 1/2 teaspoons baking soda
3/4 teaspoon baking powder
3/4 teaspoon salt
2 large eggs
3/4 cup warm water
3/4 cup buttermilk
3 tablespoons safflower oil
1 teaspoon pure vanilla extract

-Preheat oven to 350 degrees. Line standard muffin tins with paper liners; set aside.  Sift together cocoa powder, flour, sugar, baking soda, baking powder, and salt into a large bowl. Add eggs, warm water, buttermilk, oil, and vanilla, and mix until smooth, about 3 minutes. Scrape down the sides and bottom of bowl to assure batter is well mixed.

-Divide batter evenly among muffin cups, filling each 2/3 full.  Bake until tops spring back when touched, about 18-20 minutes, rotating pan once if needed.  Transfer to a wire rack; let cool completely before frosting.

In order to keep myself from unloading a bag of fun size KIT KATs straight into my mouth, it’s time I bake up my annual Halloween cupcakes…annually featuring these black and orange sprinkles.  What??  I only get one chance a year to use them!  I just hope they never go bad, because I’ve still barely made a dent in the jar (so expect to see them for years to come!).

This is a recipe that I came across in Everyday Food, so not only are they easy cupcakes to eat, they are also ridiculously easy to make!  And the flavor’s just a simple vanilla on vanilla, so they’d be good anytime of year.  The cakes had a good texture– they were nice and moist, even on day three (stored in the fridge, and brought to room temp before eating).  I don’t often whip up this type of powdered sugar and butter frosting.  While it may not have the refined, melt-in-your-mouthiness that my favorite Swiss meringue buttercreams have, it’s homey and familiar, and I like it a lot.

Vanilla Cupcakes- makes 12
from Everyday Food (October 2005)

1 1/2 cups all-purpose flour (spooned and leveled)
1 1/2 teaspoons baking powder
1/2 teaspoon salt
1/2 cup (1 stick) unsalted butter, room temperature
3/4 cup sugar
2 large eggs
1 1/2 teaspoons vanilla extract
2/3 cup reduced-fat sour cream

-Preheat oven to 350 degrees. Line a standard (12-cup) muffin tin with paper liners. In a small bowl, whisk together flour, baking powder, and salt; set aside.

-With an electric mixer, beat butter and sugar until light and fluffy, about 5 minutes. Beat in eggs, one at a time, until combined. Beat in vanilla.

-With the mixer on low speed, gradually beat in flour mixture and sour cream in alternating batches, beginning and ending with the flour. Divide batter evenly among prepared muffin cups.

-Bake until a toothpick inserted in the center of a cupcake comes out clean and the top is springy to the touch, 20 to 25 minutes. Cool 10 minutes in the pan, then turn out onto a rack to cool completely before spreading with frosting.

Vanilla Frosting- makes 1 cup
from Everyday Food (October 2005)

4 tablespoons unsalted butter, room temperature
2 cups confectioners’ sugar
2 tablespoons milk
1/2 teaspoon vanilla extract
1 pinch salt

-In a small bowl, beat together butter, sugar, milk, vanilla, and salt until light and fluffy. Use immediately, or cover with plastic wrap, and refrigerate up to 3 days. Before using, bring to room temperature.

Growing up, Halloween was totally my favorite holiday (or sort-of holiday, really).  I was like Linus, waiting all year for the Great Pumpkin to appear.  I went trick-or-treating long after I really should have stopped…until I was 16!  Every year, when I would get home with my loot, I’d go immediately to my bedroom, tip the contents of my plastic pumpkin onto the floor and form a sort of crude candy hierarchy out of it.  Things like raisins, Raisinets, Chunky Bars and Good ‘N Plenty went immediately to my parents.  Then the chocolate bars were divided into order of preference– Kit Kats, Twix, Charleston Chew and Reese’s were at the top of the heap.  From the ”other” category, I was a special fan of rootbeer Dum Dums and Now and Laters.  I wouldn’t gorge on the candy, but it eat it slowly and methodically over the month of November…the whole process seems quite demented now that I think about it. 

When Clara of I Heart Food4Thought asked us to put a costume on the Chocolate-Chocolate Cupcakes she’d chosen for TWD, I was happy to get in the spirit of things, so to speak.  I was chin-deep in packing materials when I made these, however, so I didn’t have too much time for creativity– thank goodness for colored sprinkles! 

If you have Dorie’s book, you may notice that my cupcakes don’t look quite the same as hers, and it’s not just that mine are crawling with spiders!  I finally polished off a bag of white chocolate pistoles, that had been my life’s mission to use up before I left Sydney, by making white chocolate frosting instead of dark. (That accomplished, I’ll now have to find a new, and hopefully less frivolous, life’s mission.)  I didn’t actually measure the powdered sugar in the frosting recipe…just kept adding until it was spreadable.

These were good…nothing life-altering, buy hey, they’re just simple chocolate cupcakes after all.  I’d make them again, though, for sure.  Do test them early, as there were several reports of dry cupcakes in the TWD group…I pulled mine from the oven about two minutes before the recommended time, and they were just fine.  For the recipe, look in Baking: From My Home to Yours by Dorie Greenspan, or read CB’s post.  Don’t forget to check out the TWD Blogroll to see what over 250 other people had to say!  Happy Halloween!!

Boy, even though I scaled back that Bostini cream pie recipe I made along with the Daring Bakers, I still had a ton of stuff leftover!  Enough to make Bositini cream cupcakes!  I had baked my chiffon cakes in a muffin tin, so they were in cupcake form already.  I just cut a bit out from the center of each, filled them with leftover custard and topped them with glaze that had cooled to frosting consistency.

I may be too old to knock on doors for candy, but I still like Halloween treats!