Brain Cupcakes

Get ready for Halloween with these easy to make Brain Cupcakes, and a simple DIY cupcake topper.

“It’s Alive!” *cue thunder and lightening*. That’s what goes through my head every time I look at these adorable creepy brain cupcakes that Melinda and I made for our Mad Scientist Halloween Party.  I was worried they were going to turn out as some horrible Pinterest Fail but the frosting was actually really easy to do, and the cupcake toppers took a little time but in my opinion they totally make the cupcake!

Let’s start with the cupcakes themselves. You can use whatever cupcake recipe you want, homemade or boxed mix, it doesn’t matter. We used a boxed mix and a canned frosting for ours. I wanted my frosting to be peachy, but not orange so I added a drop of orange and a drop of pink food coloring to white frosting. You may want a little more of one of the colors but start with a small amount and work your way up only using a drop at a time. Once you have the color you want put the frosting in a piping bag with a round tip, or if you lazy like me just put it in a plastic sandwich baggie and snip a small hole in one corner. Then you are ready to start frosting:

Step 1: Frost the top of the cupcake using a spatula or a butter knife. You want to create a domed shape with the sides of the frosting lower than the middle.

Step 2: Draw a line of frosting down the center of the cupcake along the ridge of the dome.

Step 3: On one side of the cupcake make a thick squiggly line (super technical term!) around the outer edge of the cupcake. These are the folds of the brain so you want to keep them pressed together. Repeat it on the other half of the cupcake.

Step 4: Fill in the upper portion of the cupcake on both sides by repeating the squiggly lines and making them large enough to fill the whole area in. Once filled in draw another line down the center of the cupcake and you’re done!

This whole process goes really quickly once you get the hang of it and remember, it’s just frosting, if you mess up just scrape it off and try again! 🙂

Alright, now that you’re cupcakes are ready you can serve them as is, or you can make this cupcake topper to really bring your brain cupcakes to life (see what I did there? lol). I’m not gonna lie, these toppers take a little time to make but I totally thought they were worth it. If you have to make a ton of cupcakes and don’t have the time or patience to make a topper for each I suggest just making a few for decoration. People will get the idea without having every cupcake fancied up.

For these cupcake toppers you need lollipop sticks, jewelry wire, a pencil, wire cutters, aluminum foil, and hot glue. Start buy trimming your sticks so they are the height you want them. Then roll each stick in a piece of aluminum foil. Fold over the excess at the top and bottom of the stick, just like you were wrapping a gift. Then cut the wire into 5 inch pieces and wrap each piece around a pencil to give them a spiral shape. It doesn’t have to be perfect you just want some curls. Remove the wire from the pencil and straighten the sides out enough to attach them to the lollipop sticks. You may need to trim a little off of the wire to get it to the right size. Place a small drop of hot glue on the sticks and press your wire to it. Once it has dried you can put the topper in the cupcakes and you have a creepy science experiment!

I am in love with these cupcakes! They turned out so cute I almost didn’t want to eat them…almost…but I did because resisting cupcakes isn’t something I do.

If you liked this make sure you check out our Mad Scientist Party Plan for more fun Halloween party ideas and follow our  Halloween Treats boards on Pinterest!
Follow Home.Made.Interest.’s board Holidays- Halloween Treats on Pinterest.