Recipe: Halloween Rolo Cupcakes

Happy Halloween!!

To celebrate one of my favourite 'holidays' I made cupcakes! I am always amazed at the incredible decorating some people are able to do on cupcakes. I, on the other hand, am an amateur. Nevertheless, these cupcakes are festive and pretty darn delicious. Inspired by candy - after all it is halloween - a Rolo spider sits atop these toffee filled chocolate cupcakes. 

Ingredients 

Cupcakes: 

3/4 cup milk

2 tsp lemon juice

1/2 cup butter, softened

3/4 cup granulated sugar

1 egg

1 tsp vanilla

1 cup all-purpose flour

1/4 cup cocoa powder

1/2 tsp baking powder

1/2 tsp baking soda

1 pinch salt

about 1/2 cup of toffee chips (to be honest, I just poured)

Icing:

1/2 cup butter, softened

3 cups icing sugar

3 Tbsp whipping cream

1 tsp vanilla

Directions

Cupcakes

1. Line muffin cups with paper liners
2. In a small bowl, combine milk and lemon. Set aside 
3. Attach the flat beater to stand mixer. In the stand mixer bowl, add butter and sugar. Beat on Speed 6 until fluffy. Beat in egg and vanilla. 
4. In a medium bowl, mix together flour, cocoa, baking powder, baking soda and salt.
5. With the stand mixer speed set at 4, add half of the flour mixture then the milk mixture, then the remaining flour mixture.
6. Add in toffee chips
7. Scoop into prepared muffin cups, until cups are about 3/4 full 
8. Bake in the centre of the oven at 375 degrees fahrenheit for 15-20 minutes or until the cupcakes pass the toothpick test.
9. Remove from muffin tin and place on a cooling rack 

Icing 

1. Attach the wire beater to stand mixer. 
2. Cream butter on speed 6, slowly add icing sugar
3. Add milk and vanilla 
4. Cream until smooth, revving your stand mixer up to the highest speed for smoothness
5. To decorate as I did, set aside 1/8 cup of icing to be coloured brown, and 1/4 cup of icing to remain white, colour the remaining orange. With a butter knife, spread orange icing over the top of the cupcake. Using a piping bag, pipe on white web. Press Rolo's into icing. Using a separate piping bag, pipe on brown legs for the Rolo spider (Rolo piece is the body of the spider, icing is the legs)

Beaten butter mixture

After combining flour, butter and milk mixtures

Ready for the oven

After the oven

Set out to cool 

Spiders on a web!

What I Learned:

• While detailed cupcake decorating can be an expensive endeavour - fancy food colourings, piping bags, tips etc. - it can be made economical as long as you are satisfied with a cupcake that isn't exactly magazine ready. Instead of investing in piping bags and tips, I cut a very small edge off of the corner of a ziploc bag which seemed to work just fine. 
• The toffee chips melt into the batter upon baking which adds to the moistness of the cupcake. Delicious! 
• Dont add too much food colouring to your icing. It will start to separate and that looks gross. If this happens simply add more icing sugar. 

I played around a lot with the icing - adding icing sugar here and there. It was definitely a big help to have my hands free as the stand mixer whipped the icing up and I was debating about how much sugar to add next!