Dexter cupcakes

I normally like to make beautiful looking cupcakes but for Halloween, I want to make them look a bit spooky and creepy. As a big fan of Dexter, it comes naturally that my halloween cupcakes have to be Dexter themed. His collection of blood slides inspire me to make cupcakes with broken glass and blood. Of course they are both edible haha. For broken glass, I used sugar and corn syrup to make some sugar glass. For blood, I made some raspberry coulis and added a tiny bit of cocoa powder to make it more real. The tartness of raspberry is great to cut the sweetness of the white chocolate. To make the cupcakes more halloweeny, I designed some pumkin cupcake wrappers and bat shaped cards to put on the cuppies.

So many disasters happened to my halloween cupcakes. First, I went to two different supermarkets to buy raspberries but they don't have it. I had to go all the way to Harbour City to get them. Fine.
Second disaster was melting the white chocolate. I read a few recipes but one recipe just said melt the white chocolate without adding any cream in it. It seized and looked gross. I tried to save it by adding some cream in it. Not working. I put it in microwave hoping to melt it and of course it failed brutally. It's actually funny coz the white chocolate turned so hard that I couldn't even scrap it out of the bowl so I had to discard the white chocolate with the bowl!! I melted a new batch with hot cream and it turned out fine. Then the next disaster was I happened to set aside 1/4 cup of cream for melting the white chocolate but I didn't use it for my first batch. So I thought it was the melted white chocolate and accidentally poured it all in the cream cheese batter... The batter turned out very runny... I quickly improvised and added 1 more tablespoon of flour hoping to make it set a bit. The cheesecakes actually turned out ok. Thank god!

Here comes the worst nightmare. I was petrified of getting burned while I cooked the sugar coz it has to reach a temperature of 150C!! haha I even wore long sleeves and gloves to avoid getting burned. Fortunately I didn't get burned. The sugar cooked fine until it got to 140C. It started to caramelize and got brown. But it hasn't got to the target temperature yet and it was only 35mins after cooking so I let it cook a bit more. When it got close to 148C, I turned off the fire and added some blue coloring. I added way too much and the sugar turned really dark! My heart just sank. But I'm very happy that I tried something new and hopefully next year I will get it perfect.

This is what I hoped to achieve.

And this is what it turned out ... brown glass!! But oh well, halloween is supposed to be bloody and ugly.

Some pretty ones with raspberry swirls.

Dexter cupcakes for our halloween party. This year I'm dressing up as Lady Gaga. haha

Yield 16 cupcakes

Ingredients
For the crust
10 chocolate digestive biscuits
40g unsalted butter, melted

For the filling
450g cream cheese
1 tbsp all-purpose flour, sieved
1/2 cup sugar
1/2 tsp vanilla extract
2 large eggs, at room temperature
1 cup white chocolate chips
1/4 cup heavy cream

Sugar glass
2 cups water
1 cups corn syrup
3 1/2 cups white sugar
1/4 tsp cream of tartar

Raspberry coulis (yield 1 cup)
1/3 cup sugar
2 tbsp water
1 box fresh raspberries
1/2 tbsp lemon juice

Directions

For raspberry coulis

1. Heat the sugar and water in a small saucepan over medium heat, stirring from time to time, until the sugar dissolves completely, about 5 mins.
2. Put the raspberries, lemon juice and sugar syrup in a blender and puree.
3. Strain through a fine mesh sieve to remove the seeds.
4. Transfer bowl of puree to fridge and let it cool.

For cheesecake

1. Preheat the oven to 160C. Line cupcake pan with paper liners.
2. Crush the digestive biscuits in a food processor (or put in a plastic bag and bash with a rolling pin). In a small bowl, combine the crumbs and melted butter. Stir together with a fork until well blended and all the dry ingredients are moistened. Put 1 1/2 tbsp of the mixture into the bottom of each cupcake liner and evenly press the crumbs down by the bottom of a glass. Chill and let it set.
3. Melt the white chocolate and cream in a small bowl over simmering water. Set aside to cool slightly.
4. To make the cheesecake, beat the cream cheese on low speed in the bowl of an electric mixer until fluffy. Blend in sugar, flour and vanilla until smooth. Add the eggs one at a time, beating well after each one. Beat in the melted chocolate.
5. Pour the batter over the crust. Add 3 drops of raspberry coulis on each cupcake and use a knife to swirl through batter to create marbled effect. 
6. Bake for about 20 minutes. Transfer to a cooling rack and let cool to room temperature. Transfer to refrigerator and let chill for at least 4 hours before serving.

For sugar glass

1. Mix water, corn syrup, sugar and cream of tartar in a pot and heat them slowly on low heat. If you heat it too rapidly, it will caramelize (become yellow & burnt). 
2. Use a candy thermometer to bring the mixture up to the hard crack stage, around 290-300 F, which should take at least an hour to reach. (optional: Mix in food coloring to create a stained-glass appearance.) If you don't have candy thermometer, you can use cold water method by dropping a spoon of syrup in cold water. It's done when the sugar forms brittle and crack if you try to mold it.
3. Cover the sheet pan with tin foil and spray it with non-stick cooking spray.
4. Pour the mixture into the pan quickly and evenly as it will start to set as soon as it is removed from the heat. Be careful and avoid being burned.
5. Shake the pan to get even coverage and to level the mixture. Wait an hour for the candy mixture to cool completely. Refrigerate the sugar glass until ready to use. Smash it to serve.

Cheesecake recipe barely adapted from raspberry swirl cheesecake cupcakes
Raspberry coulis recipe adapted from raspberry coulis