I let my two-year-old pick the next cupcake project from the book, and of course she had to pick one of the most complicated. So, here are the results:
First, I had to sculpt a realistic corpse finger from marzipan. The author of the book suggested ivory food coloring, but that looked a little too fresh, so I used a teensy bit of yellow and a teensy bit of brown. Then, using my own natural sculpting talents and a ton of willpower to not just start shoving marzipan into my mouth by the handful, I made those corpse fingers, damnit:
The nails got a brush with piping gel. As per the instructions, I set them aside in an airtight container while I whipped up a batch of chocolate cupcakes.
It took literally all my willpower not to leave this…
…on top of the trashcans at the funeral home down the street. But I managed.
After the cupcakes were cooled and vanilla frosted, it was time to make some marzipan pie lids. I finished construction while singing along to “The Worst Pies in London”, “A Little Priest”, “God That’s Good” and “Joanna”. The Patti LuPone/George Hearn version, of course. After a little experimentation with methods (though the book instructs you to put the entire thing together before decorating with luster dust, I found it was easier to brush them with gel food coloring for better contrast and then put the entire thing together) and thickness of marzipan, I they came out looking more or less all like this:
They were a hit with the kids, and bigger hit with me, since the kids didn’t want to eat the marzipan fingers and gave them to me.
I am surprisingly enjoying the aesthetics of them sitting on my baking rack in little rows. It’s like a bunch of cupcakes flipping me off every time I walk past.