The spookiest celebration of the year is here and, as always, we are getting ready to celebrate it by getting creative in the kitchen.
For Halloween, soft little sweet potato cakes are decorated with ghosts and pumpkins to become incredibly delicious cupcakes.
Ingredients for 24 mini-cupcakes
Sweet potatoes, 250 g
Wholemeal flour, 220 g
Sugar, 120 g
Eggs, 2
Milk, 170 ml
Sunflower oil, 120 ml
Baking powder, 8 g
Vanilla extract, 1 teaspoon
Sweetened whipping cream, 250 ml
Cocoa powder, 2 teaspoons
Fondant icing, 1 ball
Honey, to taste
Various food colourings, as required
Preparation
Thoroughly wash the potatoes, peel them and then boil them in a little lightly salted water for 30-40 minutes, then drain them and mash them with a potato masher. Leave them to cool down completely and add the eggs, milk and sunflower oil. Mix vigorously and then add the flour, sugar, baking powder and vanilla extract a little at a time. When you have a smooth mixture, grease some muffin moulds and fill them ¾ of the way up, then bake them at 170°C for 20 minutes. Take them out of the oven and leave them to cool down completely.
Now start making the various decorations to make 8 cupcakes with a little ghost, 8 with a pumpkin and 8 with a witch’s hat. Start making the frosting: pour two thirds of the cream (about 160 ml) into a container and the remaining part into another container, then add red and yellow colourings into the first one to make orange frosting and cocoa powder into the second one to make the cream turn brown. Whip the cream until it is stiff, then use a piping bag to put the orange frosting onto 16 cupcakes and the brown frosting onto the remaining 8.
Roll out the fondant icing and make 8 little circles a couple of millimetres thick, then shape them into a cone and create a ripple from about half way down the cone to make little ghosts. Colour one part of the remaining fondant icing orange and one part black. Make little pumpkins from the orange one and mini-cones from the black one, which will become witches’ hats. Make the details too with the black fondant icing: little triangles, thin strips and mini cylinders which will respectively be the eyes, mouth and stalks for the pumpkins, as well as some little balls which will be the eyes for the ghosts. Attach these parts onto the decorations by using honey to make them stick better, then delicately place the little ghosts onto the cupcakes covered with brown whipped cream and the pumpkins and witches’ hats onto the other 16 cupcakes. Get creative to make your favourite decorations.
