44. A Zombie Ate My Cupcake by Lily Vanilli

BOOK REVIEW: A Zombie Ate my Cupcake by Lily Vanilli

Don’t those cupcakes look oh so dainty? With shops selling cupcakes popping up like mushrooms after the rain, for example House of Mini, we just can’t get enough of chowing down on such dainty little things. But how about if I gave you a cupcake with a large beetle embracing the top of it or maybe a bloodied eyeball staring out at you from inside the cake? No? I shall take my leave now....STOP! You just might take a bite after reading this gruesomely enticing book.

Cupcakes have been banished for too long to the land of the pretty and identical, the domestic and the twee – but now, they’re biting back. Here, the author shows how you can take inspiration from anywhere – insects, roadkill, zombies – and recreate it in cake.

Throughout history, people have experimented with cake design – take Alexis Soyer, the world’s first “celebrity” chef, who in the early 1800s was making cakes of suckling pig’s heads, with cherries for eyes, and swans out of meringue. This book is an introduction to making cakes that look weird, ugly, and even grotesque – but always taste divine!

Lily shows you how to turn basic cupcakes into amazingly realistic – and delicious – sculptures, simply using materials such as edible luster dusts, gum paste, and glazes, and a range of natural ingredients.

Give your guests a shock with creepy Marzipan Beetles, or create your own cupcake graveyard with Undead Gingerbread tombstones. For really gory desserts, why not make Dracula’s Bite red velvet cupcakes, a cherry “blood” sauce, or some Bleeding Hearts, which are molded with deep red fondant into human hearts?

You can also go for heavenly Fallen Angel Cakes, made with a divine honey-flavored frosting, or indulgent, truly dark chocolate Devil’s Food Cupcakes, with ganache frosting and chocolate devil’s horns.

Take your inspiration from the macabre and grotesque to create some really evil-looking desserts that taste divine. Believe me, bones and blood couldn’t have tasted better in a thousand years. Love cupcakes for a thousand years.......