pumpkin patch

I thought they made the best cupcake toppers in 1998 and I still think they make a perfectly adorable cupcake topper now.  I’m talking of course about candy corn pumpkins, a candy I would count the days down in the year to get. The second October 1^st happened I would eat a bag each week before Halloween in October as a teenager.  I still think candy corn with milk is like the best snack ever in fall, and what other people feel for pumpkin spice, I feel for candy corn.  I literally can’t even wrap my head around people not liking it.  And then after a lifetime of arguing this humble candy’s superiority, I was rewarded by the candy corn gods.  The one thing that always nagged me about candy corn was figuring out why it had the color pattern it did.  For at least 35 years I have checked each ear of corn I have eaten for any kernels kind of resembling the yellow, orange, white pattern.  I wondered if I was corn color blind.  I desperately hoped no one would bring it up in debates as a reason why candy corn sucked.  And then, this week, at Fort Vannoy Farms, like a tiny gift from the stalks above, a kernel perfectly matching the candy version lay in my path!  So, mark one universal question off the list and bring on any candy corn haters.  I’m ready for them.

My first explorations outside of my mom’s old Betty Crocker Cookbook came from a cupcake recipe from Nigella Lawson’s How To Be A Domestic Goddess, which came out pretty much right when I graduated from high school.  A sample recipe was in some magazine I read, and the cupcakes looked so perfect, so fresh, I immediately ripped it out and put it in a plastic sheet protector.  I still have it to this day.  I sawed the tops of tops off of so many cupcakes to follow the clean, modern decorating pattern her fairy cake recipe called for, that I could have made a tunnel to London from DC from them, if I knew how to make underwater tunnels using cupcake tops.  It was a lot.  Her original recipe called for using all sorts candy, and I never felt cooler making a baked good in my life.  But then the seasons changed, and a new topper was needed to sit on top of the shellac smooth icing (buttercream was way too American for Nigella back then, her fairy cakes are fit for the dainty hands of a royalty, not a tower of frosting!). And so, many batches of these cupcakes were then covered in geometric candy corn patterns and some minimalistic-ly had one candy corn pumpkin regally perched on top.  I felt sure Nigella and Andy Warhol would have been proud, and I definitely felt proud taking them to parties even if drunk people would eat them without even noticing the perfect placement of candy corn. 

Since having kids, I have gone the more literally pumpkin patch route in decorating my Halloween pumpkin cupcakes.  Going to the pumpkin patch is one of my favorite things to do all year with my lil’ guys, and especially this year with everything just awful, it was nice to do something that felt like normal.  I hope this simple little cupcake captures that fun.  This chocolate cupcake will not let you down and is a wonderful vehicle for a beautiful cocoa buttercream (sorry Nigella!).  It’s a creamy, moist (sorry everyone for using that word!) chocolate cupcake that holds its own next to my favorite candy of the year!  So, this “basic” but effective cupcake topper has a place in my heart and tummy, especially when gracing such a yummy cupcake. 

Since we are all about the candy and pop art inspired cupcakes, take a journey back to 1971 and enjoy Willy Wonka and the Chocolate Factory.  While not technically a horror movie, most of Roald Dahl’s stories have a very inescapable dark side and this movie captures that in a technicolor dream/ nightmare way.  Plus, it’s all about the candy, so it is perfect for this time of year.