Make your own monsters this Halloween with our easy baking recipe - decorate with green and black icing and mini marshmallows
Ingredients (makes 12):
For the cupcakes
200g soft butter
175g golden caster sugar
250g self-raising flour
1 tsp baking powder
¼ tsp salt
3 large eggs, at room temperature
½ tsp vanilla extract
100ml milk, at room temperature
To decorate
300g icing sugar, sifted
2-3 tbsp milk
green food colouring paste (we used Party Green from Sugarflair)
36 mini marshmallows, 12 snipped in half (for the eyes)
tube of black piping icing or gel
Method
Heat oven to 180C/160C fan/gas 4 and line a 12-hole muffin tin with deep muffin cases. Cream the butter with the sugar until pale and fluffy. Add the remaining cake ingredients and beat until smooth. Spoon into the muffin cases and bake for 20 minutes or until golden and a skewer inserted into one of the middle cakes comes out clean. Cool for 5 minutes in the tin, then completely on a wire rack.
Using a small, sharp serrated knife, cut a semi-circle piece of cake from the left and right of each cake, to make stepped edges, level with the cupcake case. Next, make a width ways cut about 3cm from the top of the cake, about 1cm deep. Slice a 5mm piece off the surface of the cake to meet this cut, to make a flat, raised face and prominent forehead. Chill for 10 minutes to firm the crumbs.
Mix the icing sugar, milk and green colouring to make a very thick icing that flows slowly from the spoon. Spoon 1 tbsp onto a cake and let it begin to spread itself over the cut shape. Ease it here and there with a palette knife to coat. Add marshmallow neck bolts and eyes. Repeat for each cupcake. Leave to set, then pipe on the faces and hair.