I made these a long while ago but just flipped through a few photos of them. These were far too cool to not talk about to I’m going back to easily the most bad-ass of cupcakes I’ve ever seen. Forgive my photos. I scrambled and pulled what I could off my iPhone.
2 summers ago Doug and I were beyond excited for The Dark Knight to come out. We followed the viral campaign for it (um…hello! They hid cell phones in cakes!) and wanted to do something special for the day it came out. Since the whole idea of the Joker was of evil, twisted jokes played on people, what better way than to make a trick cupcake? I watched the original Tim Burton Batman at least a zillion times with my brothers as a kid. We even had the cassette tape of the soundtrack we danced around to (Thanks for that one, Prince!) I loved the color scheme of that Joker with vibrant purples and greens and knew the cupcakes had to be those colors. The idea was to make crazy fun looking cupcakes everyone would want to tear into but in the middle would be a gush of BLACKberry filling. Emphasis on the black (get it?) I wanted it to be like the Full House episode when that mean boy gives Stephanie and D.J. trick gum to turn their mouths jet black! The end result was pretty funny, with an office full of people biting in to cupcakes and running around showing each other their tongues and teeth. It took 3 bottles of Americolor Super Black food color to do it, but it was awesome. Doug wrote a goofy note from “the Joker” to warn everyone as I was concerned for the hapless few who might accidentally bite into one and have black gush all over their clothes. That dye stains a bit! I was very generous in my filling of these cupcakes. There was less cake and more black goo! These would be equally awesome for Halloween cupcakes.
No Photoshop, kids. The batter was really THAT purple!
The recipe I used for the cupcakes was the same as I used here for petit fours. I know it’s mostly from a box but its fast, its consistent and its easy. For times when measuring and putting thought to cake is too much. Just halve it and add in enough purple food coloring to reach your desired shade. Mine was quite vibrant. Fill cupcake liners 2/3 full and bake about 35 minutes at 350 til cake tested comes out clean from a cupcake in the center of the rack. Let cool completely before filling and frosting.
Any type of frosting you like will work, just be liberal with the lime green food coloring.
No photo can properly show how BLACK this stuff was.
For the filling I cheated and used a jar of Smucker’s Special Recipe Triple Berry. It’s in the ice cream topping area of your grocery. I wanted something that would gush out a bit but not too thin as it would soak into the cupcake. I was going for a liquid filled center here and this stuff worked perfect. Tasted good too. To the jar, I added (3) 3/4oz bottles of Americolor Super Black. Any cake decorating shop will have this brand and its important I used this because black food coloring is not true black. Wilton, for example, is really an intensely deep purple color. If you thin it down a ton or add a touch to a glass of water you can see. Americolor is much closer to black and uses a deep foresty green for their black. So the color is far more “yuck” when stained on your tongue than a magenta-purple. Be careful with this stuff when you mix it up though. A drop of it on pretty much anything and you’ll be scrubbing for a while!
A freshly filled cupcake.
To fill the cupcakes, using a paring knife, cut out a cone into the middle of the cupcake. Cut the top off the cone and set it aside. Spoon as much black filling as you can into the middle of the cupcake and put the top back on. Frost away after that. I finished them off with rainbow sprinkles. You may (or may not) want to warn your friends before they tear into them! If you need more visuals for how to fill a cupcake this way, over at Cupcake Bakeshop (an amazing source of cupcake inspiration for anyone, btw) she shows it very clearly here.
I loved Doug's note
In case you’re wondering how it looked after eating one, let my old work buddies Cam and Jeff show you:
Look at those sexy black tongues.
