Halloween Brain Cakes!

I always have a lot of fun planning and making the food for our annual Halloween party, and some times I EVEN remember to take pictures along the way!  Unfortunately, i am usually so busy up until the party that I wouldn't get around to posting anything until after Halloween and that isn't helpful!

 So, today I am posting the step by step directions for the brain cupcakes that I made last year.  I started with a basic cupcake and these little plastic skull shaped buckets that I found at Walmart last year. I was thrilled to discover that a regular cupcake fit down inside the skull.

 I decided to pop the top off of the cupcake once it was inside the skull, so that I could drop in a blob of red jelly in the middle of the brain.

Next, I pushed the top back into the edges of the skull opening.  You could probably skip this part, but a bleeding brain cup cake seemed way neater that a plain cupcake.  Besides, the jam in the middle tasted good and I sear it made the brain bump bigger and that looked better.

 Here is a collection of the skull cakes ready to be iced.

I didn't take pictures of my step by step icing process, but you can find lots of them online.  Here is a picture that is similar to what I did.

 There are step by step pictures of the icing on this website.  I probably mounded up my icing higher than they did.  I also tried to get more of a purple-grey color for the brain, but I think I like the bright pink in the example better.

And here are my finished brain cakes.  Because they were inside the skull cups, they had to be eaten with a spoon.  Had I realized that a utensil would have been necessary, I think having a small spoon sticking out of the brain with some cherry syrup "blood" would have been fun.  Enjoy your BRAINS!