Crabby about cupcakes...

Amongst other things I love baking. I am not allowed to do it often as my husband says he would be the size of a small house if I was allowed to bake as much as I wanted.

However, this said, he buys me books with weird and wonderful recipes in them which makes the whole not-baking thing a little harder to do.

When we first moved up to York my husband discovered an amazing shop called 'give a dog a bone' (which can also be found in the list on the right). It sells everything for comic book lovers and those who like retro chic... It also sells the most amazing selection of books which you probably wouldn't find in your local Waterstones!

The book he bought me was 'Zombie ate my cupcake' by Lily Vanilli

The book contains recipes for cupcakes that really should be called anti-cupcakes because they don't have cute, pastel designs or pretty flower decorations... They are the cupcakes from horror stories!

The first batch I attempted were the 'crazy crabs' cakes as they had the base of red velvet cake (which is one of my favourites).

The recipe uses American measurements but there is also an English equivalent... The recipe is easy to follow although the amount of ingredients needed seems enormous... You can substitute various elements at your discretion... I didn't dye my marzipan purple but instead used a silver edible spray...

The final result was certainly pleasing... And I can't wait to see which batch I will do next!