Raining Blood cupcakes

I thought long and hard about what would be my special ingredient for my Halloween cupcakes this year. About a month ago I decided and tried to source my chosen ingredient from various places including local shops and even resorted to asking a chosen few people on Twitter (thanks for your help if it was you!!).  I then found out a special license was required to handle my chosen ingredient and I didn't fancy getting into trouble just for baking a cake so I kinda gave up for a few minutes. Who'd have thought pigs blood was so difficult to obtain? That's right - pigs blood. Ever since I'd read about Bocca Di Lupo's Sanguinaccio desert, a sweet pate of pig's blood and chocolate I've wanted to try it and thought Halloween would be the perfect time to try my own cupcake version.

Thankfully Bocca Di Lupo's gelato shop, Gelupo, came to my rescue with their Sanguinaccio gelato - a gelato with chocolate, Marsala and PIG'S BLOOD. Perfect.

I pootled on down to their Soho store and got a few scoops of their Sanguinaccio and rushed it home on the bus to New Cross. The girl in the store was lovely and put it in a special take away container thing for me and it was still frozen when I got home.

I weighed out what I'd need and put the rest in the freezer. I'd tried some in the shop and was pleasantly surprised - a friend had bet me it would taste "like black pudding", (gag) but thankfully it didn't. It was very chocolaty, with a hint of cinnamon and an iron background from the blood. Quite tasty actually.

So I took a photo of the ice cream. It looks kinda like poo...

I did warn you.

Anyways, moving on from the poo image. I used one of my own recipes for boozy cupcakes and replaced all of the milk in the recipe with slightly melted gelato, and also replaced some of the booze with it. I added some Marsala to complement the gelato,  and a wee tipple of Cointreau for good measure. I'm not going to type out the recipe as I'm not sure many people want to make pigs blood ice cream cupcakes. If you do, mail me and the recipe is yours.

I covered them in some creamy marscapone frosting - mainly because I wasn't sure what went with blood (does anyone?) and wanted something a bit lighter to balance out the quite brownie like cakes. I resisted covering them in glitter to signify my favourite vampire in the world as Manny would have ridiculed me with his 'ooooh sparkles' routine and I tire of it and instead splattered them with some coulis.

So how did they taste? Rather good actually - they were like a brownie but a bit lighter -quite squidgy and moist with a boozy kick and just a hint of iron'y goodness. While eating them though I couldn't quite get it out of mind that I was eating blood which is odd as I eat meat but in a desert it just seemed different and a little silly really.

Incase you are wondering where the blog title comes from check out my inspiration - the fabulous Slayer covered in blood playing Raining Blood live.

Happy Halloween everyone and remember everyone's entitled to one good scare!

Welcome to my nightmare

I was asked by the infamous curator of cake and chaos, Miss Cakehead, to make some blood splattered cupcakes as part of a 'disturbing’ edible experience at the Alice Cooper Freak Show auditions at Hyde Park this Monday 27th June. Yes that's right, cake for metal legend ALICE COOPER!!

The cakes themselves were pretty much a given - what else could they be but (blood) red velvets? I added a little extra red colouring and a little extra vanilla to combat any taste this may add. 

The blood proved a little trickier. I first opted to make the cherry 'blood' as featured in A Zombie Ate my Cupcake, but alas it was more like clotted blood and a very odd grey colour so put my thinking cap on and came up with my own blood - raspberry coulis, thickened with a little icing sugar and a bit of red food colouring in it to ensure we got the right colour. Fabulous.

The raspberry coulis blood really added a nice tartness to the red velvets and I really enjoyed it. I'm not usually that much of a fan of cream cheese frosting (ie I can't eat more than one) but the tartness of the raspberries again helped with that, and I would happily include raspberries in these again. Have been thinking of reasons for bloody cupcakes - Mortician cupcakes anyone? 

Finally, just wanted to share the centrepiece of the Silent Hill themed exhibition with you all. The nurse cake was made by Laura from Mamma Jamma Cakes and is 100% edible (except for a centre rod to keep her upright - take that Duff!) 

Copyright Mamma Jamma Cakes 

Isn't it awesome!

You can read more about the event here.