Vegan Mofo V Day 5- Fix My Brain!*

When I heard my soon-to-be-nephew's birthday was coming up I knew I wanted to make a special treat for him. My sister told me he liked  zombies. I saw a brain cupcake kit at World Market and I knew I had to try and make them. I didn't buy the kit because I already have recipes for amazing cupcakes and icing thanks to VCTOTW. I looked at the directions for making the brains and it didn't look too complicated, so the only thing I was missing were the cupcake aprons.I didn't even know what a cupcake apron was until I saw these, but you could probably make your own easily. I'm too lazy and he's only going to be three so I don't think he'll mind.

I lucked out and found a cupcake decorating set at TJ Maxx, so I was even more excited for this project. I've never piped icing with proper bags and tips so I was really looking forward to learning that. I cruised the internet for ideas and found lots of great ones, my favorite one involved red velvet cupcakes. I didn't even think of that. I was just going to color vanilla ones, but if you're going to break out the food coloring, you better make red velvet (Crimson Velveteen!) , right?

My practice cupcakes were chocolate with  Vegan Fluffy Buttercream from VCTOTW. I am going to color the icing for the real ones. These were more about piping practice than anything else. I now know I should leave the icing in the fridge for a while before I start playing with it. A few cupcakes into it my squiggles were not as well defined and were starting to spread. I also thought I could get away with halving the recipe but I was wrong. I'm so glad I had the presence of mind to do a dry run or I would have had a disaster on my hands. I'm going to try to make the official cupcakes look more like these. I want to make ganache filled ones another time, they look so good!


*I love the Marked Men, don't you?