Week Fourteen -- Alien Cupcakes and Fruit Kabobs

More often than not the image of what we’re going to make doesn’t match up with what we actually make. This week was a prime example of this. My son’s teacher sent an email asking if we could send treats for Pumpkin Day. Well, sure. So, after much discussion we decided to make alien cupcakes and fruit kabobs because nothing says Pumpkin Say like a bunch of fruit on a stick and a weird aliens made out of fluorescent green frosting and Twizzlers.

And the image I had of all of this, of course, came from Martha Stewart. (That was your first problem, you say.) So, we go to the store and buy a chocolate cake mix – no, Martha didn’t recommend this – obviously. And we buy a can of vanilla frosting (also not very M.S.). We searched for the green taffy that she used, but all we found were bags of multicolored taffy. And I’m thinking to make 24 cupcakes, we’ll need to buy about eleven bags, so we kept looking. Luckily Twizzlers now has rainbow colored licorice (which I’m not entirely sure can actually be called licorice. (Seriously.) I already had some giant gumdrops at home (courtesy of Whole Foods – try the Acai berry ones. Yum).

So, here’s what we did:

1.       Mix cake mix according to the package directions. I’m sorry. I know. But, there it is.

2.       Pour the mix evenly into a lined cupcake pan. We filled them about ¾ full. I like a puffy cupcake.

3.       Bake according to the directions. Gotta love Duncan Hines.

4.       While the cupcakes baked, we mixed up some acid green frosting, sliced the gumdrops in half and sliced the Twizzlers into thirds.

5.       Cool the cupcakes. Frost. Decorate. Done. (Take that M.S.)

The fruit kabobs are also way easy. I would have to say I probably wouldn’t do these for the under six crowd. Halloween just isn’t going to be as much fun if someone gets a skewer in the eye. Buy fruit, wash, cut as appropriate, slide the fruit onto the skewers. We also used marshmallows, but beware if you want to do this. Add the marshmallows just before you serve them. They get mushy.

That’s it. Like I said, our photos probably more realistically reflect a ten-year-old and his crazy mom’s abilities than the beautiful photos that M.S. turns out. I like to lower the bar. It makes it easier to step over it.