A Fist Full of Flowers: Halloween...uh, I mean, Reformation Day!

Woo hoo, it's Halloween weekend! You know what else is celebrated on October 31? Reformation Day! Yay Martin Luther! I'm so glad he stood up for what was right, even though it cost him everything!

Anyways, the young adult group at church had a Halloween party last Saturday, and the church did Trunk or Treat on Sunday. I was pretty excited about it all; I mean, small children running around in cute little costumes, plus a whole bunch of leftover candy to eat later? Count me in!

I decided to dress up as Audrey Hepburn from Breakfast at Tiffany's because A) I already had a black dress and B) it's super easy to put together. But, of course, by the time I made homemade biscuits (and burned my cookie sheets!) and did laundry, I had, oh, about 8 hours to kill before the party. So I made this painting to hang on my wall and some candy corn cupcakes to take with me.

Want to know how I made the cupcakes? Of course you do! They're so incredibly cute!

Candy Corn Cupcakes
Adapted from Half Baked's Honey Cupcakes

1 stick butter, room temperature
3/4 cup sugar
2 eggs
1 1/2 cups all-purpose flour
1 tsp baking powder
1/2 tsp salt
1/2 cup buttermilk
1/4 cup honey
1 tsp vanilla

Preheat oven to 350 degrees and line 12 cup muffin pan with cupcake liners.
In a medium bowl mix together flour, baking powder and salt; set aside.
In a small bowl mix together buttermilk, honey and vanilla; set aside.
In the bowl of stand mixer, cream butter and sugar on medium speed until combined (it should look like wet sand).
Add eggs one at a time, beating well after each addition and scraping down sides of bowl as needed.
Gradually add the dry and wet ingredients, alternating in equal amounts, and mix until combined.
Pour half the cupcake batter into another bowl. Add red and yellow food coloring to one bowl and mix until the entire batter is a deep orange. Do the same with the other bowl to make yellow batter.
Fill cupcake liners about 1/3 full of yellow mixture, followed by 1/3 of orange mixture on top.
Bake for 18-20 minutes.
Let cupcakes cool in pans for 5 minutes, then remove to wire rack to finish cooling.

Delicious Frosting
Frosting recipes are a little hard for me, mainly because I use the "eyeball" method just like my grandmother. It drives my dad crazy. :)

Usually what I do for a nice white frosting is I use softened butter, cream cheese, vanilla, and powdered sugar (and milk if I have it). I use about a quarter of a package of cream cheese to ice about 12-18 cupcakes. The more butter you use, the less pure white your frosting will be, so I would start with a half stick of butter and a quarter package of cream cheese, plus about a teaspoon of vanilla. Mix powdered sugar in until you can get a peak to stand up when you remove the beaters. This *should* give you a delicious white frosting with a hint of cream cheese. You can always add more cream cheese if you want. That's the beauty of the eyeball method!

DIY Colored Sugar
I didn't have any decorator's sugar to add to the cupcakes, so I made my own! 1 drop of food coloring per rounded tablespoonful of sugar will get you a nice, cheap way to decorate cookies and cupcakes and stuff.

Add a few candy corns to the top, and voila! Candy corn cupcakes. Halloween never tasted so good!

Still wondering about the Audrey Hepburn costume? Well I made that, too. It was a wonderful little hodgepodge of different articles of clothing hanging in my closet plus a piece of unfinished white satin I found in the bargain bin at Hobby Lobby. Costumes don't have to be expensive to be cute!