Celebrating Halloween with Bloody Sugar Shard Cupcakes

I can’t believe I haven’t posted in over two weeks! I thought things were crazy before but the past couple of weeks have just been insane! Originally I was happy to see the end of October arriving, but November is looking to be just as crazy, if not more so. At this point I’m just looking forward to the Christmas break!

If you have been reading my blog, you will already know that fall is not my favourite time of year, but what you don’t know is Halloween is also my least favourite “holiday”. I don’t know why, I’m just not into it! I have only ever Trick or Treated once in my entire life (people are always so shocked to hear that!),

However, that doesn’t mean that I don’t do some Halloween stuff! We hand out candy and carve pumpkins and of course I can’t resist baking some Halloween treats! Last week I made some pumpkin baked donuts, which I will post about later on this week and last night I decided to try decorating some Halloween cupcakes! Inspired by many Pinterest posts, I went with bloody sugar shard cupcakes and they turned out so well! And they were SO EASY! The sugar glass was actually so easy to make that I’ve been thinking about how I can incorporate it into my Christmas baking.

What You Need:

• Cupcakes, you can use your own recipe or buy some. I was feeling lazy so I went with a boxed devils food cake mix
• Frosting. Again, I was lazy and used packaged buttercream frosting
• Red gel food colouring
• 1 3/4 cups Granulated sugar
• 1/2 cup White corn syrup
• 1/2 cup Water
• Candy thermometer (read below if you don’t have one) 
• Cookie sheet
• Cooking spray or shortening

Directions: 

• Bake cupcakes according to directions. Let cool completely
• Grease cookie sheet with cooking spray/shortening
• Mix sugar, corn syrup and water in a large pan over medium high heat, keep stirring until the mixture is bubbling – this takes about 20-30 minutes
• Using your candy thermometer, keep an eye on the mixture until it reaches 300 degrees. Remove from heat
• Pour sugar mixture into cookie sheet and let cool completely – about an hour
• Once completely cooled, smash the sugar with a mallet or rolling pin
• Frost cupcakes
• Add glass shards to cupcakes by “stabbing” the cupcake – I did 2-3 per cupcake
• Decorate with “blood” using the red gel food colouring and a toothpick. The messier it looks, the better!
• Enjoy!

Notes:

• If you don’t have a candy thermometer, you can drop some of the sugar mixture into a glass of cold water to test it. If the sugar forms a sticky ball then it’s ready to be taken off the heat
• If your sugar starts to look a little brown from the caramelization, you can add a small drop of blue food colouring to the mixture to bring it back to a more neutral colour
• I’m sure this goes without saying, but melted sugar is hot! Please be careful when making it

 

Did any of you guys make anything fun for Halloween?