Cupcakes- Trublood Themed

Finished: glass shard cupcakes

The Ingredients:

• Cupcakes (any flavor you want; I used chocolate and vanilla)
• Frosting (any kind you want; I used cream cheese)
• Filling
• Pudding (any flavor you want; I used vanilla)
• Whipped cream
• Toppings
• Glass Shards 
• 3/4 cup of white sugar
• 1/4 cup of water
• Maraschino cherry syrup

The Story:

      So, for the finale of TruBlood on HBO (judge me, I've read all the books too), I decided to make an appropriately matching cupcake. I read Martha Stewart Living and found these spooky halloween cupcakes and decided to improve upon them.

Cupcakes filled with pudding and whipped cream, dyed red

       For saving time measures, I used box cupcake mix (or rather, half a box of vanilla and half of chocolate). After cooking these, my next step was to make a vanilla filling, which I dyed red for max effect. I wanted it to look like congealed blood, so I kept the pudding a bit chunky to look like clots. I mixed it with whipped cream to keep it fluffy. Then, I filled a pipe bag fitted with my largest tip, stuck it in the middle of the cupcake, and filled them. Tasted yummy, but looked gross, which made me happy. Honestly, I probably used less than 1/4 cup for an entire dozen cupcakes, so my family got to eat the rest of the vanilla pudding. This made my dad extremely happy- he loves cook and serve vanilla pudding!

Topping: glass candy shards + syrup

      After this step, I made the cream cheese frosting and the "glass shards." I had to redo the "glass" three times because I don't know my candy temperatures. Basically, you are looking for an almost caramelized sugar, but right before the mixture starts to brown. As you can see above, mine went a little far into the browing because I had already messed it up twice by not cooking it long enough and I was bound and determined not to have to do it a third time. When it is the right consistency, you spread it quickly across a thin-sided pan (be careful, it is HOT) and let it cool- either in the fridge or on a counter.  Smack the pan to crack the candy into shards.

Cream Cheese Frosting: vanilla+ butter +cream cheese+ powdered sugar

      The last part was assembling my cupcakes: ice the cupcakes with frosting (also using a pipe bag), sticking in "glass shards" in an aesthetically pleasing manner, and drizzling with marashino cherry syrup (Martha also suggested red fruit preserves - strawberry, raspberry, cherry). They looked killer and tasted quite good too!

Perfect combination.

Filling: vanilla pudding + whipped cream (looked gross, tasted good)