True Blood Cupcakes, Blood Sauce & Vampire Paper Dolls

                                      true blood cupcake

You'll need a great tasting "blood" dessert sauce for your Halloween and horror themed parties. The following sauce is based on what we call in Australia 'heavy syrup', the addition of fresh raspberries not only gives you a great flavour but also cuts down or eliminates the need for red food colourings. 

Unless you have an extremely sweet tooth there will be leftover heavy syrup, but you can refrigerate the leftover syrup in an airtight jar where it will keep indefinitely and be used to sweeten your fruit desserts, baking & cocktails. 

Raspberry "Blood" Sauce

2 cups of sugar

2 cups of water

1 cup of raspberries pureed and sieved 

Raspberry liqueur (optional)

Red food colour (optional)

Combine the sugar and the water in a small saucepan. Bring to a boil, washing down any extra sugar crystals from the side with a wet pastry brush; cook until sugar is completely dissolved, keep an eye on it you don't want to end up with caramel, but rather a clear thick syrup. Allow to cool completely.

To make the blood sauce; in bowl combine the pureed raspberries with syrup to taste, add a dash of raspberry liqueur and a few drops of red colouring if desired. Chill until ready to use.

For 'True Blood' dessert cupcakes, pipe a circle of white frosting onto your cupcake making sure you have a "hole" in the centre to hold your sauce. When it's time to serve pop your cupcakes on serving plates and fill the hole with blood sauce. 

Vampire Paper Dolls

I LOVE THESE!! Vampire paper dolls by Tom Tierney contains a plethora of vampire characters from ancient Egypt up to.... yes, Edward and Bella!! There is The Vampire Cat of Nebeshima from Japan, Queen Akasha from The Queen of the Damned, Dracula and Vampira to name a few. 

You get one "form" paper doll to dress but it's easy enough to use that as a template to cut out plain card forms. Imagine your vampire themed dinner party where each guest has a vampire doll with a matching cupcake... loads of fun :)

HAPPY HALLOWEEN!! 

Vampire paper dolls available from Amazon

Slay Vampires and Bake Lemon Lime Poppy seed Cakes

                            lemon & lime poppy seed mini loaves

Is your silver cross a fake? Can't find your stake? Forgot to pick up the holy water and used the last of the garlic in last nights aioli? Never fear, poppy seeds are here to stop that eminent vampire attack this Halloween.

According to folkloric tales....

'methods commonly practised in Europe included severing the tendons at the knees or placing poppy seeds, millet, or sand on the ground at the grave site of a presumed vampire; this was intended to keep the vampire occupied all night by counting the fallen grains, indicating an association of vampires with arithmomania' Wikipedia

Well, 'severing the tendons' seems a bit messy so I'd recommend sprinkling poppy seeds around the entrance of your home; the vampires are forced to count them, over and over again. Eventually the sun will rise or the vampire will have fled before dawn, either way poppy seeds play an important part in your vampire slaying kit. Plus you can always make cakes with the leftovers. 

Love this cupcake recipe adapted from two recipes one from Julie Hasson and one from Donna Hay; it's a versatile recipe, packed with flavour with a moist pound cake like texture & can be frosted or iced if desired. You don't need a stand mixer for this recipe it's hand mixed with a wooden spoon. Variants, including a reduced fat higher fibre version are below the recipe. Of course they are perfect served with a hot of tea after a hard nights vampire slaying. 

Lemon and Lime Poppy Seed cakes

Preheat oven to 180c (350F) line cupcake tin/s with paper liners

Makes 24 mini sized or 12 standard sized cupcakes 

I actually used a silicone mini financier mould & the produced 50 mini loaves from the batter.

Ingredients

1 1/4 cups plain flour (all purpose)

1 tsp baking powder

1/4 tsp salt

1 cup sugar 

1 tbs poppy seeds

1/2 cup unsalted butter melted & cooled

1 egg

1/2 cup plain yoghurt

1 tsp grated lemon zest

1 tsp lime zest

2 tbs lemon juice

1 tbls lime juice

Method

Whisk together flour, baking powder and salt in a small bowl, add poppy seeds.

In a large bowl whisk together sugar, butter and egg until smooth. Swap to a wooden spoon and add yoghurt, zest's and juices, beat until smooth. Add flour mix and beat until just smooth.

Spoon into your prepared cupcake pan/s. Bake for 12 to 15 minutes for mini sized,  22 to 25 standard sized, 10 to 12 for mini financiers; until there centres are just set and spring when lightly touched. Cool in tin for 5 minutes before transferring to cooling rack until completely cold.

From here you can ice them with your favourite lemon glaze, frost them a cream cheese frosting or leave plain.

Variants; 

Reduced fat... I make a reduced fat version of these for my husbands lunch box by replacing the butter with margarine, full fat yoghurt with fat free and I omit the poppy seeds and instead add one tablespoon of oat bran. 

Choc chip... omit the poppy seeds and replace with a half a cup of dark or milk choc chips

Orange... swap around the zests used the recipe, orange is lovely & paired with milk chocolate they taste a bit like Terry's Chocolate Oranges. Try tangelo, grapefruit or mandarin zest for something different.

Sour Cream... for sour cream lovers out there replace yoghurt with an equal amount of sour cream. 

                         Vampires don't sparkle but a dead fairy does

I've found myself with many extra dead fairies from last Halloween, so I've made more cupcakes. Don't be surprised if you see dead fairies topping cupcakes next Halloween too, I may have made up a few too many!!!!

Happy Baking :)