The pre-Halloween bustle is gearing up in Mrs J’s house. Today she decided to do muffins. Monster muffins, of course…

Start with whipping up a batch of regular muffins. Use any recipe you like. Or a pack of pre-made. It’s not that important in this case.

Mrs J made some muffins from scratch without any frills whatsoever. She made sure not to make them too large since she wasn’t going to fill them. No-frills muffins without any filling can get a bit dry. Today it’s not monster muffins in terms of size though, just monster fun!

Let your muffins cool completely. It takes a long time. Try not to eat them. Mrs J went for a run before starting the frosting. She has superior willpower. On occasion.

For the frosting, start by cooking some flour and milk with a pinch of salt on low heat. What you want is a kind of zero-taste pudding texture. Stir to avoid burning it at the bottom. When done let cool completely. (Mrs J watched some tennis on TV while this was cooling. If you have a dog, take him for a walk. Takes about as long as you need.)

Take equal amounts of unsalted butter and vegetable fat and put in your mixer. Mix in about 1/4 of the weight of your fat in sugar and add essence of vanilla by the teaspoon until it’s as sweet and vanilla-y as you can take it.

Go ahead and use vanilla sugar if you have it, but you might need a lot to get to a good taste. Mrs J used vanilla essence and regular caster sugar. Mix until as fluffy as your machine will get it. Then add, spoonful by spoonful, some of your “pudding”. Mix after each spoonful. Keep adding until when you taste it you can’t feel any crunch from the sugar. The mixture should still be very sweet (it’s a frosting buttercream, y’all) but also light and supple. Add yellow and red food colours to taste. When finished, let cool in the fridge for another 20 min.

Then slather on muffins.

At this point it’s all up to your imagination and creativity! Use whatever candy and edible decorations you have. Mrs J used some Smarties and some silvered sugar pearls and some sugar paste she had left over in tubes.

Check out the evil eye!

Check out the spidery beings!

Mrs J used food colors she’d never tried before from the local shop. While they didn’t work quite the way she thought they would, the result was indeed very Halloween-y. In a scary kind of way!