Cupcake werewolf

When I did my Halloween baking last year, I also made some werewolf cupcakes from the Hello, Cupcake! book. They were actually the first thing I tried from the book and not as fiddly as the penguins or ducks and I thought they looked really cool. I only have one photo though.

Essentially it's a cupcake that is slightly peaked (rather than flat). Take a piece of marshmallow and stick it on using buttercream to make a raised part that will become the wolf's muzzle. You have to cut a piece out of the marshmallow so it looks like the open jaw of the wolf. Then take a piece of a flat fruit chew - I found a Refresher bar worked really well. Use a pink or red one as it is going to be your wolf's tongue - fold it and place it inside the marshmallow, using a little buttercream to stick on. Then take the smallest piping nozzle you possess - or better still, cheat and use a tube of writing icing. Make sure it's white though - this is what you use to pipe tiny little teeth inside the wolf's mouth!

The final stages are to cover the whole thing in chocolate buttercream - my piping skills weren't good enough at this point to make it look like fur. Finally, place two smarties (ideally yellow) on top for the eyes, and using black writing icing put a dot on each to make the pupil.
Grrrrr!

I'm updating this for October 2012 to send to Calendar Cakes, hosted by Dolly Bakes and Laura Loves Cakes, as their theme this month is Halloween

As it's a cupcake I am also sharing it with Cupcake Tuesday at Hoosier Homemade

 And finally I'm sending it to Mom's Crazy Cooking "This Week's Cravings" linkup, as my werewolf is pretty crazy!

Selling Halloween cupcakes in Islington

I was very excited last October to be invited to bake cupcakes and sell them at a real live cafe in Islington!
I can't actually remember how I came across the event, but it was definitely on the internet somewhere. A PR company called the Chocolate Consultancy was hosting an event at the Look Mum No Hands cycle cafe near Old Street, and had invited various professional chefs and bakers to give demonstrations. As part of the event, a handful of amateur bakers would also be allowed to sell their wares!

At the time I was trying to raise money for the Bobby Moore Fund to take part in Project Namibia - in June this year I travelled to Africa with the charity and helped to renovate a primary school, and raised over £4,500 in the process. I had already done a few bake sales at work and decided this was a good way to try to raise some more money.

As the event was a week before Halloween, I decided to make Halloween cupcakes. I had been to America not long before, and couldn't resist stocking up on baking goodies - I bought Halloween themed cupcake cases and both edible and non-edible cake toppers. I also bought some mini cutters that I used to cut out shapes like the bat from roll-out icing which I had coloured black. I even bought a spider web cake stand from John Lewis especially for the occasion!

Here I am with my cakes... and a T-shirt I also bought in America! It says "Queen of cakes" :-)

It was also really interesting to get the chance to meet some fellow amateur bakers. For instance I got chatting to Jody from Boola's Bakery, and discovered she lives near to me in Sutton. Check out her website here:

http://www.bigboolasbakery.co.uk/

I also met "Baking Addict" and one of her friends, both of whom ended up becoming very good friends of mine. We've had all sorts of adventures together since then!

Check out BakingAddict's blog here:

http://www.themorethanoccasionalbaker.blogspot.com
These Oreo cupcakes below were her creation, and sold out very quickly!

Here are some of the cakes made by other people at the event.

There was a demonstration (and tasting) from one of the chefs at Gu...

... and from Great British Bake Off winner Edd Kimber.

Look at all the nice people who came to eat our cakes!