Butterfly Buns: Trick or Treat? Halloween Cupcakes

I love Halloween. I know I shouldn't, I should think it's a ridiculous Americanised holiday that was created to line the pockets of 'the man', but I can't help myself. After all it's pretty much just an excuse to dress up and eat fun size chocolate bars, what's not to like? I've got a list as long as my arm of Halloween things I want to make, but thought I'd start off simple this week with some cupcakes.

I've had my eye on Sweetapolita's Vanilla Funfetti Cupcakes for a while now, and when I found some black and orange sprinkles at the supermarket it seemed only appropriate that they be used to make my own seasonal version. As far as I can tell, 'funfetti' is just a made up word for 'sprinkles mixed into cake mixture', so I started with my basic sponge recipe and threw a handful of my spooky sprinkles in before baking. I half expected them to all sink to the bottom the way cherries or chocolate chips do if you're not careful, so it was a pleasant surprise when they stayed nicely distributed throughout each cupcake.

I toyed with the idea of decorating the tops with two-tone black and orange buttercream (as per last week's recap post), but wanted to change things around a bit so went for a two layer frosting - a swirl of orange first, topped with a smaller swirl of black. FYI, it is apparently impossible to make proper black buttercream. Black icing colour just made it grey at best, so I added a bit of cocoa powder and ended with dark brown.

The 'funfetti' technique is a really nice touch, I didn't know if the sprinkles would give the cake a strange crunchy texture, but they dissolved completely and left little dots of colour behind - you can't see very well in my rubbish photos though. I'm already imagining a Christmas version using red and green sprinkles!