Mummy Cupcakes for Home Baker’s Challenge

Mummy cupcakes are moist chocolate cupcakes decorated and frosted as mummies. There are a great halloween treat and kids including adults alike would love these cupcakes.

Continue reading or jump to recipe . Edited and update above two pictures on Oct 2017. These are old photos resized to fit current template.

For October’s Home Bakers Challenge, Nalini gave us five recipes to choose from. I chose Mummy cupcakes that are a perfect bake for Halloween. I procrastinated till the last minute, then decided skip this bake and join in the next month. There is another group I recently joined and the theme for this month in that group was cupcakes. One a second thought, I went ahead and backed these cupcakes couple of days ago to kill two birds in one shot. I am glad I baked these cakes as Mr.U (husband) & I loved the cakes. I baked 2/3rds of the recipe as we are trying to cut back on our sugar intake.

I followed the recipe as given and baked 6 regular size cupcakes and a dozen mini cupcakes, as I love the mini ones. In fact, Mr.U ate the cupcakes and I ate the mini ones. For some reason, mini cupcakes are more appealing to my eyes. For the cupcakes, I scaled down the recipe to 2/3rds and did the same for the butter cream frosting. However, I was short of the frosting and felt I should have gone with the full recipe for the frosting. Hence, I will list the 2/3rds recipe for the cupcakes and the full recipe for the frosting.

Mummy Cupcakes

Total Time: 55 – 65 minutes (excludes cooling time for the cupcakes)
Preparation: 15 – 20 minutes
Baking: 23 – 25 minutes
Decorating: 15 – 20 minutes
Yields: 6 regular size & 12 mini cupcakes

Ingredients:
Cupcakes:

• ½ cup All-Purpose Flour
• 1/3 tsp. Baking Powder
• ½ cup Unsweetened Cocoa Powder
• 2 tsp. Instant Espresso Powder (I used the Instant Coffee Powder)
• 1/8 tsp. Salt (little over 1/8 and less than 1/4 tsp.)
• 1 Stick Unsalted Butter (room temperature)
• 2/3 cup Sugar
• 2 Eggs (I used room temperature eggs)
• 2/3 tsp. Vanilla Extract
• 1/3 cup Sour Cream

Preparation:

• Pre-heat the oven 350 F.
• Line the cupcakes tray with the liners.
• In a bowl mix together flour, cocoa powder, espresso or coffee powder, baking powder and salt.
• In a large bowl, beat the butter and sugar until light and fluffy, about 3 minutes.
• Beat in the eggs one at a time.
• Add the Vanilla extract and beat to mix.
• Beat in ½ the flour mixture, then the sour cream and lastly the remaining flour mixture.
• Once the flour is well incorporated into the egg mixture, pour the batter into the cupcakes tray.
• Bake in a pre-heat middle rack for 25 minutes or until a tooth pick inserted comes out clean. I baked the mini cupcakes for 18 ½ minutes and regular cupcakes for 23 minutes. When baking, do keep in mind that temperatures vary from oven to oven.
• Let the cupcakes cool on a cake rack before frosting them.

Decoration
Ingredients:

• M&Ms
• Frosting
  • 2 cup Confectioner’s Sugar
  • ¼ cup Unsalted Butter
  • 1 tsp. Vanilla Extract
  • 1 – 1 ½ tbsps. boiling Water (I used hot milk)

Preparation:

• Combine confectioner’s sugar, melted butter, vanilla extract and water in bowl. Beat all the ingredients together until a frosting consistency is achieved. It takes about 2-3 minutes. Add more milk if required.
• Fill a frosting in a piping bag coupled with a slant tip. Drop two drops of frosting on the cupcake to make the eyes. On those drops of frosting, stick two M&Ms with letter side down. These will be the eyes of the mummy. Pipe the frosting on the cupcakes. With a color gel (I used red), place a drop on the M&Ms. There are many videos on YouTube demonstrating how to decorate the cupcakes.
• I frosted 3 cupcakes as mummies and the rest, made my own designs. I used those cakes for my other post with cupcakes.