Halloween Oozing Brain Cupcakes

Oozing brain cupcakes don't sound very appetising I know but these cakes are a tasty Halloween treat that will look great on your Halloween party table. The hidden strawberry jam in the centre of the cake adds to the bloody brain effect. This is a really simple recipe from Cottage Delight that you can make with the kids, they'll love making the 'brain' icing!

Ingredients

140g softened butter
3 medium eggs
140g golden caster sugar
100g self-raising flour
6 tsp Cottage Delight strawberry extra jam (room temperature)

Icing
600g icing sugar
6 tbsp water
1tsp pink food colouring

Method

- Heat the oven to 190C / fan oven 170C / Gas 5
- Arrange 6 paper cake cases into the cake tin
- Add all the cake ingredients into a large bowl and beat with an electric whisk for about 3 minutes until you have a smooth batter
- Divide the mixture between each cake case so they are half full
- Bake for 12-15 minutes until the cakes are risen and golden
- Remove from the oven and leave to cool on a wire rack

- Once the cakes are cool, cut out a hole in the centre of each cake. I used the OXO Good Grips cupcake corer which is really simple to use and makes a clean cut circle in the cake. It left a perfect hole to put the jam in.
- Put a teaspoon of jam into each cupcake (I used Cottage Delight strawberry extra jam for it's extra jammy flavour!)
- Mix the icing sugar, pink food colouring and water together in a bowl until stiff. Make sure it is stiff enough so the icing holds its shape, too soft and the 'brains' won't hold their shape
- Place the icing into a piping bag and decorate the cupcakes with a squiggly pattern to look like brains. Leave until set

Tips

- Make sure the butter is soft or the cake batter will be lumpy. If your butter is hard, beat this on its own first before adding the other ingredients.
- You can also use buttercream icing to decorate the cakes, this is a firmer icing so you might need to use a circle nozzle to pipe it with.