spiderman cupcakes

For my son Matthew's 5th birthday, I made Spiderman cookies and a Spiderman cake for his birthday party, but I also decided to make Spiderman cupcakes for his Kindergarten class to celebrate with him!  But instead of making a topper out of royal icing like I did for last year's Superman cupcakes, I wanted to pipe Spidey's face directly on top of the cupcake, like how I do for my Hello Kitty cupcakes.

For the cupcake batter, I wanted to try this recipe I recently saw from Sweetapolita (love her!) for whipped vanilla dream cupcakes - they sounded delicious, and since it was adapted from the same Dorie Greenspan recipe that I used for the Spiderman birthday cake, I thought it would be a perfect experiment to see which recipe I liked better!  The main highlight in Sweetapolita's cupcakes was to fold in whipped cream at the end, to give it a light yet moist texture.

After filling my lined cupcake tins 3/4 full and baking them up, they came out of the oven looking airy and light, and really fluffy!

But then after they came to room temperature, they started deflating and sinking in the middle. :( Maybe I didn't let them bake long enough?  However when I tasted one, it still tasted great, was very moist, and had a fine crumb.  So I decided to use them anyway, and used a Wilton 1M tip to pipe big swirls of blue tinted cream cheese frosting.

Then it was time for the fun part - piping Spiderman's face!  So I started by piping an oval blob of red frosting, and then used a small point tip to pipe on the eyes in white frosting.

Next I used black frosting to outline the eyes.

And finally I used black frosting to pipe the web on Spiderman's face. 

I loved the end result, and I loved even more that it was all made with frosting!

And even though the cupcakes had deflated from their initial fluffy glory, I still loved the taste and texture of the cake.

And even more important, Matthew and his classmates loved the cupcakes!  Happy Birthday Matthew!!!

spiderman birthday cake

To celebrate my son Matthew's 5th birthday, I made him a Spiderman birthday cake to go along with the Spiderman cookies that I made as favors.  And as described in last year's Superman birthday cake post, my son seems to only like vanilla cake filled with whipped cream and fresh strawberries!  So I decided to make the same cake.  Except this time, I wanted to try a different vanilla cake recipe and chose a vanilla cake from the book "Baking: From My Home to Yours" by Dorie Greenspan.

Since the recipe makes two 9-inch cake layers but I wanted to make a 10-inch cake, I increased the recipe to 1.5 times to allow for the extra batter I would need.

Once the cakes had baked and cooled, I used a serrated knife to level them off, and then whipped up a batch of cream cheese buttercream, and a batch of freshly whipped cream.  I colored the majority of the frosting bright blue, and then piped a ring of it around the perimeter of the cake before filling it with the whipped cream.  This was to act as sort of a border, so that the whipped cream filling wouldn't ooze out the sides of the cake.

Next I added a layer of sliced fresh strawberries, and then covered it with another layer of whipped cream.

Then I placed the second layer of cake on top, and then did a quick crumb coat with the blue frosting.  I chilled the entire cake in the fridge for 30 minutes, and then applied a second coat of frosting.

Then came the fun part - piping Spiderman's face on the top of the cake!  I started by piping a black outline of the shape of his face, followed by a black outline of his eyes, and the signature black web on his face.  Then I filled in the eyes with white frosting using a star tip, and the rest of his face with red frosting and a star tip.

Then to finish off the cake, I wanted to pipe a spiderweb over the entire cake as a background to Spidey's face.  So I piped long black lines extending from Spidey's face, over the sides of the cake, and ending with a small black blob on the cake board.

And then I connected the web with curved black lines.

By the time I finished the cake, it was late at night, so I boxed it up and put it in the fridge until the big reveal.  I couldn't wait to see the look on Matthew's face!

As soon as I brought out the cake at the party, all the kids ran up and crowded around the cake table.

And my friend Helen got an awesome picture of Matthew blowing out the candles!

Happy Birthday, my Matthew!  We love you!!!

*** Update:
I ended up making this cake again, two years later, for my coworker's son's birthday. But this time it was a chocolate cake filled with chocolate mousse. I was able to take some better photos this time around, so here they are! :)

spiderman cookies

For my son Matthew's 5th birthday last month, he requested everything Spiderman.  (Last year, it was Superman - cookies, cupcakes, and cake!)  So I obliged, and started the birthday baking frenzy by making Spiderman cookies as birthday party favors.

I found a great tutorial over at The Sweet Adventures of Sugarbelle (love her site!), but made a couple of slight modifications for my cookies: a) I used a different design for the web on Spidey's face, based on a picture of Spiderman I found on the internet, and b) I wanted the web to be raised instead of flat with the rest of the icing, so I piped on the web design only after the red icing had dried (instead of piping the web immediately after the red as Sugarbelle does).

But first, I asked my husband to make me a custom copper cookie cutter in the shape of Spidey's head!

Once the cutter was ready, I make a few batches of my go-to sugar cookie recipe, rolled out the dough, and cut out my shapes.

After baking them for 10-12 minutes at 350 F, I let them cool on wire racks, and then transferred them to airtight containers so that I could decorate them the next day.

When I was ready to decorate the cookies the next day, I made a batch of royal icing (recipe from the same book), and separated the icing into different containers so that I could add coloring.  (I would need black, red, and white).  Then I piped on Spidey's eyes with stiff black icing, and filled the eyes in with white runny icing.

Next I piped an outline of Spidey's head with stiff red icing, and then filled it in with runny red icing.

After letting the cookies dry for a few hours, I was ready to pipe the web design on Spidey's face, using stiff black icing.  I also ended up piping another outline around the eyes to make them pop.

Then I let them dry overnight, before packaging them in cellophane bags tied with raffia.  

The kids loved them!  Especially my 2-year old daughter, who likes to scrape all the cookie icing off with her teeth before eating the actual cookie!

Stay tuned for more Spiderman goodies to come in the next couple of posts!

*** Update: Click here to see the Spiderman birthday cake, and here to see the Spiderman cupcakes that I made as well!