Thursday, July 8, 2010

Red Velvet Cake Eyeballs

EDT's Count Down To Halloween!
This little gem is brought to you by the Zombie mistress herself Rikki of Custom Zombie. A delightful little boutique specializing in not only beautiful jewelry, and photography, but transforming your digital image into that of the living dead. You heard me right kids she will make you look like a zombie so when the zombie apocalypse finally does happen there will be no surprises. Now all "eyes" on her amazing recipe...

A Deliciously Disgusting Dish
I throw a huge annual Halloween party and we go ALL OUT! No slacking on the decorations, no expenses spared on the costumes. So you can be sure that the food has to live up to those standards too! By far, the creepiest looking thing on my table is the red velvet cake eyeballs. You can imagine how gross that red center looks in low light! Some people are too squeamish to try them but once they do, they can’t get over how good they taste!
Creepy Cake Eyeballs (Recipe yields approximately 50 1” eyeballs)
Ingredients:
• 1 box of red velvet cake mix
• Ingredients on cake box
• 1 can cream cheese icing
• 1 lb. white chocolate or almond bark (for dipping)
• Icing markers


Bake the red velvet cake according to the directions on the box. Once the cake has cooled, crumble it into a large bowl and combine it with the entire can of icing. I’ve found the best method for this is to use your hands; a spoon just won’t cut it. So take off any jewelry, wash your hands, and dig in! Make sure that all cake pieces are saturated with the icing. Cover the bowl and place it in the freezer for 1-3 hours (this makes the next step less messy).
Once frozen, roll the mixture into balls (about 1” diameter). If it is taking a long time to get it all rolled you may need to occasionally put the mixture back into the freezer – or just keep excess mixture there until it’s needed. When it gets gooey it’s very hard to roll up and you’ll have an even bigger mess on your hands (no pun intended!).
After all your mixture has been balled, place them back in the freezer and leave them overnight. If you can’t wait that long, four hours is the minimum amount of time I would suggest but you’ll need to leave all but a few at a time in the freezer during the next step.
Melt the dipping chocolate or almond bark (mixing in a teaspoon of shortening for each pound of chocolate will help to keep it from clumping). Dip each ball individually, making sure that it gets completely covered and place them onto wax paper to dry/harden.
Once the candy coating has hardened, use the icing markers to decorate the balls like eyes. This takes a bit of an artistic hand but not too much talent is involved. First, I brush on circles in the centers in either green or blue (you could use any color you prefer). Next I make pupils with the black marker. Lastly, I make the eyes look bloodshot by drawing red squiggly lines coming out from the center.
The type of icing you use for decorating the cake eyeballs is very important. Through trial and error I’ve found a few things that don’t work: gel icing will not dry, cake icing will not set up, and felt tipped icing markers refuse to write on the candy coating.
Icing markers that have paint brush type tips have worked better than anything else I have tried. Whatever you decide to use, I suggest something that will harden or dry so you can pack/store the cake balls easily.




Custom Zombie’s business was born out of her love for horror, Halloween, and all things zombie. Though she has dabbled in many art forms, Photoshop is her preferred medium. She spend’s most of her free time building Halloween props, playing with her two black cats, reading graphic novels, and plotting the worldwide invasion of my undead masses!

For more of custom zombie on the web you can find her at …
Website: customzombie.com/
Blog : customzombie.blogspot.com
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9 comments:

nitebyrd said...

These sound deliciously scary! I'll have to test some out for the Holiday! Thanks, Rikki!

Nacreous Alchemy said...

Wow Rikki, you are starting us off with a great post! Those look amazing can't wait to try them. Thanks for sharing. :)

Creeplings said...

I have got to try these. I'm assuming you can make them with cake and icing from scratch? Cause there is no way I'm using that crap from the store. Dessert is sacred, damn it.

Custom Zombie said...

Thanks guys!
Creeplings, yes you can definitely make them from scratch! Works the same way - bake your cake, make your icing, then mix the two. :)

Mrs. Evils said...

I freaking love red velvet! This is too awesome for words!

Illustrated Ink said...

Awesome, I'll definitely make these! My boyfriend is crazy for red velvet! Thanks for the great post!

RubySkeleton said...

Red velvet is my all time FAVORITE cake! Rikki, this is brillant & those eyeballs look yummy! ;-}

Living Dead Girl Nicole said...

This reminds me of the Oreo balls that someone at my work makes!! But so much cooler!! And Red velvet is my fave.. its what we had for our wedding cake for our halloween wedding!!

idle hands designs said...

Thanks Rikki! Gonna have to try this recipe out ::)