Vampire Cupcakes of Doom!

My bite marks. Let me show you them.

These cupcakes rock so hard. Your socks will fly clean off. I swear, it happens. Then you're going to have to start wearing those crazy weird old man sock garters whenever you think about these cupcakes or you'll go around freaking people out with your sock-flying. Though, those weird sock garters might freak people out, too.

Roman told me that I have to give him credit for these cupcakes. He didn't make them, but he did point me to this page that I think he found on BoingBoing. So thanks, Roman for hooking me up with this awesome idea.

I wanted to make these so bad as soon as I saw them. As luck would have it, today was a friend's birthday so I make 18 of these babies and brought them in to work today. My coworkers ate every single one of them before lunchtime even came. The birthday boy ate 3 of them and quite a few other people had 2 each. Someone even told me that these are the best cupcakes he's ever had. Nice. Way to bring on the vegan cupcake love.

I was just gonna try and veganize the recipe on that site, but then I realized that I had Vegan Cupcakes Take Over the World and Isa and Terry had already done it for me. :D So I made these using the Golden Vanilla Cupcake recipe and the Old-Fashioned Velvet Icing recipe. That frosting recipe is my absolute favorite. It's light and fluffy and not very sweet. I'm one of those people that usually wipes frosting off of cake/cupcakes because it's way too sweet for me. This stuff I pile high on top of cupcakes. It's a perfect balance of yumminess, plus it doesn't overpower the flavor of whatever cupcake you're putting it on top of. You can either use store-bought cherry pie filling or make your own cherry filling. I didn't have any cherries, so I did it the cheating way.

Golden Vanilla Cupcakes from Vegan Cupcakes Take Over the World

1 cup soymilk
1 tsp apple cider vinegar
1 1/4 cups all-purpose flour
2 Tbsp cornstarch
3/4 tsp baking powder
1/2 tsp baking soda
1/2 tsp salt
1/3 cup canola oil
3/4 cup granulated sugar
2 1/4 tsp vanilla

Preheat oven to 350F. Line muffin pan with cupcake liners. Whisk the soy milk and vinegar in a measuring cup and set aside a few minutes to get good and curdled.

In a large bowl, use a hand-held mixer at medium speed to mix the soy milk mixture, oil, sugar and vanilla. Sift in the flour, cornstarch, baking powder, baking soda and salt and mix until no large lumps remain.

Fill cupcake liners two-thirds of the way and bake for 20 to 22 minutes until done. Transfer to a cooling rack and let cool completely.

If you're making your own cherry filling, go ahead and do that right now. (Just mix some chopped cherries with sugar, water and cornstarch. Cook it until it thickens, stirring constantly. You can adjust how much sugar you add according to how sweet your cherries are.) Once you've made your cherry mixture or opened the can of cherry pie filling, use a blender (yay immersion blenders!) or food processor, blend the cherry stuff until it's smooth with no chunks. Set this aside and get ready to start carving cupcakes!

Old-Fashioned Velvet Icing from Vegan Cupcakes Take Over the World

2 Tbsp all-purpose flour
1/2 cup soy milk
1/4 cup nonhydrogenated shortening
1/4 cup margarine
2 tsp vanilla
1 cup superfine or castor sugar (I can't always find this, so I just use powdered sugar and it works fine)

In a small saucepan over medium heat, whisk together the flour and soy milk. Stir constantly until the mixture starts to thicken and has a pudding-like consistency, about 3 to 4 minutes. Remove from heat and allow to cool 2 minutes. Transfer to a large bowl and press plastic wrap onto the top of custard to prevent a skin from forming. Allow mixture to cool completely before next step. (This is very important, as warm pudding might melt the fats.)

Cream together the shortening, margarine, vanilla and sugar then beat in the cold custard. Beat with electric mixer for 4 to 6 minutes; frosting should become lighter in color and have a creamy texture, similar to very thick whipped cream.



To assemble:

Cut a little cone shaped hole out of a cupcake. You're going to put the cherry stuff in here.

Save the little cut out piece. Now, put a about a tablespoon or so of cherry filling inside your cupcake hole. Don't fill it too full, though.

Take the little piece of cupcake that you cut out of the center and cut a thin piece off of the top of it. This is the "lid" to the middle where the cherry stuff is hanging out.

Put the little hat on top of the cupcake to cover up the cherry middle section.

Awww... look how cute it is!

Oh noes! They multiplied!!! Get out while you still can!!! AAAAAHHHHHHHHHHHHHH!!!!!!!!!

Now put the frosting on top and get all excited to put the bite marks in. Be careful when you're putting the frosting on so that you don't accidentally dislodge the little cherry hat. The rule of thumb from the cake decorating classes I took years ago is this: always spread frosting on top of frosting. You never want to rub frosting on top of the cake. That's how you get crumbs in the frosting. Sound confusing? Basically it means that you want to put a huge dollop of frosting on top of your cupcake and spread it outwards from the top of the pile. You pretty much just want to be moving the frosting around softly.

To do that, take a toothpick and wiggle it around a little bit so the hole stays in. Then dip the toothpick in some of the leftover cherry mixture and sort of wipe it on the sides down from the bite marks. You want it to look like this when it's all done.