Emma still says “cupcapes” instead of “cupcakes” and I think it’s so cute that I’ve actually started saying it myself.  From here on out, they will forever be known as cupcapes.

As I mentioned in my previous post, I have been hit with a crippling bout of laziness.  I did a lot of cooking last week that I never blogged about.  Since I am so far behind, I figure I’ll hit the highlights and blog about the rest the next time I make them.

One of the highlights were these spider cupcapes I made last Sunday.  We met up with Matt’s brother, sis-in-law, and their twin boys for a day of fun at the pumpkin patch.  This was actually a perfect opportunity for me to try out the vanilla cake recipe from The Joy of Vegan Baking since the chocolate cake recipe is my staple.  The cake was good, but denser than the chocolate cake.  It was also more work.  I will make it again, but my go-to will always be the chocolate cake recipe, I think.

To decorate, I used a vanilla buttercream tinted orange.  The web was chocolate buttercream.  The spiders were easy to make and Emma enjoyed “helping” me with them (i.e. she tasted all of the body parts to make sure they were good).  The bodies are mini-Oreo-like cookies, a brand that uses only natural ingredients and no hydrogenated oils.  The legs are red licorice.  I searched high and low for a more natural candy to use in place of the licorice, but came up empty.  In the end, I decided that this little of a dose of red dye #40 wouldn’t be all that bad.  The eyes are little candies made for decorating cakes, made with all natural ingredients.  Yum, yum, yum!