For Halloween, I wanted to bake something that would invoke childhood. Halloween, no matter how old you are, is always about dressing up and candy. And when you’re older, booze. So when I saw the Chocolate Malt Cupcake in Gail Wagman’s cookbook, I knew I had to give it a try.

The recipe started off with an incredibly light cupcake batter that included Ovaltine. (”Be…sure…to…drink…your…Ovaltine? A crummy commercial?”). This batter is so light that it’s scary. It seems more like frosting than batter. Getting it into the cupcake tins was kind of a nightmare:

They baked up fine, if a little fragile. Light cupcakes require a really light hand, which I sometimes don’t have. It’s why I like heartier fare:

The recipe included crushed Whoppers candy in the batter, which I wasn’t a fan of. I feel like the Ovaltine got the malt aspect across just fine. The other weird thing was that the cupcake papers started pulling away from the cupcakes! I think it’s because the batter was so light that it didn’t even stick to the papers. Weird.

The frosting was much easier. And tasty!!! Chocolate malt is actually a pretty good flavor when it’s not on the inside of a Whopper and all crunchy:

To make these the ultimate in Halloween cupcakes, I had to top them with candy! I picked up some miniature candy bars at the grocery store and topped each cupcake with a candy:

These went over very well at work. I carried them around to different offices and forced people to say, “Trick or treat.”

I also made some Pumpkin Spice Cupcakes with Cinnamon Rum Frosting (Danae over at The Busty Baker gave me the recipe for that delicious, delicious frosting) to take to my sister-in-law’s Halloween Party. They were also a success, but I neglected to take photos of the process. This is all I’ve got:

(I ran out of frosting for those last two cupcakes, so they just got some powdered sugar.)

Next up, a Free Form Apple Tart!