Ding-Dong Dead Cakes ⋆ Welcome to the Necro Nomnomnomicon

The Devil’s brew. Drinking the Devil’s sauce. The Devil’s Springwater. No matter what you call it, alcohol and the Devil have a long and twisted relationship. Speaking of relationships, this week’s cupcake recipe is a lot like my last boyfriend: dark, rich, and incredibly dense…and just like these sweet little skull cakes of death…more than a little boozy.

These ding-dongs of death were inspired by my friend Battywampus and her love of the Colorado Bulldog drink…or more specifically, her darkly delicious, werewolf-inspired version she calls the Hair of the Dog:

Ms. Battywampus has an ongoing feature on her site where she pairs songs with sips…little boozy drinks to enjoy while listening to fantastically appropriate songs.

For this installment, she and I planned on focusing out energies on re-interpreting the classic cocktail, the Colorado Bulldog.

The original Bulldog is made by mixing together coffee liquor, vodka, cream and soda with a drizzle of chocolate syrup, and all those ingredients translate beautifully into a cupcake! And for anyone worried about the alcohol content, don’t worry, it bakes off in the oven so feel free to eat as many of these as you want. Be warned, however, that the secret sauce we’ll be adding later DOES contain booze, so if you want these cupcakes to be “dry” in every sense of the word, skip the sauce.

To make your own ding-dongs of death you will need:

1 box devil’s food cake mix
1 box chocolate instant pudding
4 eggs
½ cup oil
½ cup Coke (must be regular…don’t use diet or Zero…)
½ cup Kahlua
1 Tablespoon instant espresso

For the cream filling you will need:

3 Tablespoons cold water
1 teaspoon gelatin
4 Tablespoons unsalted butter
1 pinch of salt
1 teaspoon vanilla
1 ¼ (7oz) marshmallow cream

For the secret sauce you will need:

¾ cup Coke
1/3 cup sugar
1/3 cup Kahlua
1 Tablespoon vodka
2 Tablespoons butter
1 Tablespoon gelatin

For the white vanilla frosting you will need:

1 can of pre-made vanilla frosting
1 cup white chocolate

You’ll also need a muffin tin. For this recipe, I used this skull muffin pan but you can use any regular cupcake pan. Just make sure when you’re baking them to adjust for the size and watch so they don’t burn.

Start by first preheating your oven to 325F/162C.

In a mixing bowl, combine your cake mix with your chocolate pudding, the 4 eggs, the oil, Coke, Kahlua and instant espresso.

Fill each of your skull cake cavities approximately ½ full.

Pop into the oven and allow to cook for 40-50 minutes. No really, you read that right, 40-50 minutes. We’re cooking these guys at a low slow temperature because while we want the alcohol to burn off, we don’t want to lose the Kahlua flavor. Plus, these skull tins are deep and large, so it takes longer for them to cook. As I mentioned earlier, if you’re using regular muffin tins, keep an eye on them as they’ll most likely cook much faster.

While your skull cakes are cooking, let’s prep our cream filling.

In a microwave-safe bowl, sprinkle the teaspoon of gelatin over your three tablespoons of cold water and allow to bloom for 5 minutes.

Add the butter and microwave until everything is melted and liquid.

Add the salt and the teaspoon of vanilla and pour the whole mixture over your marshmallow cream. The cream should essentially liquefy under the heat of the mix and transform into a smooth white mass. Transfer to a piping bag and allow to cool to room temperature.

Now let’s prep our secret sauce.

Put your ¾ cup Coke into a pot and sprinkle with the remaining tablespoon of gelatin and allow to bloom for 5 minutes. Then place over medium heat and add the 1/3 cup sugar. Stir until all the sugar is dissolved. Remove from heat and add our Kahlua and butter and mix until completely dissolved and delicious.

By now your skull cakes should be done. Allow them to cool completely but don’t remove them from the muffin tin quite yet.

When they’re cool, use a sharp knife to level off the back of your skull cakes.

Next, use your knife to cut out a divot in the back of each of your skull cakes and scoop out a bit of the inside to create a hollow pocket. Feel free to eat the bits you scrape out but keep the piece you cut out. We’ll replace that in a minute.

Fill this with marshmallow cream and then use the initial piece you cut out to cover up the marshmallow cream.

Do this to all your skulls. I’ve found it’s easiest to do this when they’re in the mold, which is why we’ve left them in there for now. We’ll remove them later, I promise.

Place the skulls in the freezer to cool and the marshmallow cream to firm up for about 30 minutes.

Once they’re good and frosty, it’s time to get saucy!

Turn your skulls out onto a rack and spoon a generous amount of your secret sauce over each skull. You want to give them a good soaking, but don’t go too crazy as they’ll start to fall apart if too wet. A good tablespoon or two for each skull is plenty.

Put the skulls into the fridge for about 30 minutes and allow the secret sauce to really soak in.

Once they’ve soaked up the sauce, it’s time to drizzle them with frosting.

You can absolutely use a homemade frosting or buttercream, but as I said earlier, I love sloth and I’ll be honest in the fact that for every cup of Kahlua in this recipe, I’ve taste tested at least two additional ones, so usually at this point in the recipe, I’ll be lucky if I’m still standing…which is why we’re using store-bought frosting for this part.

Pop that vanilla frosting into the microwave and nuke until smooth and liquid. Add your chopped white chocolate and stir. The heat from the melted frosting should melt the white chocolate…and the smaller your white chocolate is chopped, the easier it is for it to melt.

I used the mixer for this step to make sure my frosting was perfectly smooth. This also whips a bit of air into it, helping to stretch the amount you have and making it easier to cover all your skull cakes.

Once all your chocolate is melted and the frosting mixture is smooth, put your skulls back on the cooling rack and pour that frosting all over them. Because the skulls are fresh from the fridge and cool, the frosting will start to harden almost as soon as it hits them, so work quickly to get them covered before it sets up and gets too thick.

To serve, whip up a huge glass of Hair of the Dog and slice into your ding-dong death skulls and enjoy!