Zombie Cupcakes

Tomorrow we become dog owners. 

We are driving down to Longview to meet with the dog provider (and Josh's family at the same time.)   We have bought a kennel / crate for the puppy who will be 9 weeks old.  He has a soft fleece pillow, a few dog toys, some chews, some food-toys and a snuggly comfortable animal toy.  I did not buy the one with the heartbeat or the pet cam although I considered both after reading Cesar Milans' "How to Raise the Perfect Dog."

I kid you not, I have been raising the kids with calm-assertive energy since reading the book.  I am clear and firm and ensure I am the Pack Leader.

The house is a mess and I feel we should clean up, and of course I have to watch Criminal Minds, but I couldn't resist asking whether I showed you the Zombie Cupcakes.  Did I?

Can't remember.

In case I didn't, a few weeks ago I baked Zombie Cupcakes for Josh's birthday.  Did I mention he had a birthday?  He turned 35 but we didn't do anything awfully special, even though it was a half-decade birthday, because Josh prefers to make significant birth-year events out of primes and squares and other numerical oddities (like his 2000th week would be good).  Still, I made zombie cupcakes in honor of all the zombie fervor out there in popular culture (and on our ipad) this year.

And we ate them.

They were from Zombie Cupcakes by Zilly Rosen and I bought frosting supplies from Home Cake Decorating Supply on Roosevelt.

The bloody bitten ones had meringue icing.  It was very buttery and
I found it too fatty and not sweet enough.  Tara loved it so it must be
a matter of taste (cream vs sugar!)

The Zombie hands are made from "half-and-half"white fondant and gum
paste.  They were very easy to make.  They are covered in
crumbled oreo cookies for muddy earth and the white dots are maggots!

After a while I started to innovate and made this chunk of teeth and gum
from my own design.  I ate it but it wasn't tasty.  The cupcakes were red velvet
and more delicious than the topping (IMHO)

And then I took it all a bit far and start to make bento dioramas of blood
and maggots and demon-eyed rats and Wren looked, like, worried.

Because everyone is into Magic the Gathering, we made a birthday
card for Josh from a favorite card and called it "Josh, the Mind Sculptor"
(Its real name is JACE the Mind Sculptor as any MtG player knows)

Anyway, we did the candle thing and all was well.  Wren ate two zombie cupcakes.  I used some fancy real beeswax candles from PCC and we sang.  My next desert event is going to be jelly. 

But that's another post.

If you love Jelly.  Let me know so I put you on the evite.