Halloween Oreo Cupcakes: five motifs from one frosting

Whisk the eggs with the sugar and the vanilla paste, then add the milk and the melted butter: everything wet goes into one bowl. Sift the flour, cocoa, baking powder and salt into a second bowl. Sifting matters with cocoa: it clumps, and the lumps won't dissolve in the batter.

Add the dry mixture to the wet and stir only until no flour is visible. It doesn't take longer: the longer you stir, the tougher the cupcake becomes.

Place one whole Oreo in each case, flat, filling side up. Spoon two portions of batter on top until the case is about two-thirds full. Not higher: the batter rises, and an overflowing cupcake can no longer be decorated neatly.

Bake the cupcakes at 170 °C fan oven for 16 minutes. Skewer test in the middle: the Oreo at the base stays soft, and that's how it should be. Then let them cool completely: on a lukewarm cupcake, any frosting will melt away.

Beat the butter and fondant well with the flat beater in the bowl until the mixture is light and airy. The fondant needs this time: at first it is firm and only becomes smooth through beating.

Only now add the cream cheese and stir it in briefly. Beating for too long makes it runny, and a runny frosting does not hold its shape, least of all the bandages of a mummy.

Cut everything first, then decorate. Cutting becomes tedious once there is frosting on your fingers. You will need:
- Tombstone: cut one whole Oreo straight along the sides so it becomes angular instead of round. Keep the offcuts, as they will become the bat's ears.
- Bat: open one Oreo. The half with the thin layer of filling is the body, and the other half you break into two pieces for the wings.
- Crumbs: crush five Oreos. They go into the frosting later and onto the grave.

First spread a thin layer of pure white frosting over the whole cupcake. It is only the glue. Then dip the cupcake upside down into the Oreo crumbs until the surface is thickly covered. Only now come the bandages: pipe white frosting criss-cross over the top, horizontally, vertically, calmly and irregularly. That very disorder makes the mummy, and the dark base makes every strip stand out. Finally, place two Candy eyes in a gap.

Pipe a high swirl of white frosting and place the cupcake upside down on baking paper. This flattens the dome evenly, which is impossible by hand. Lift off carefully, then paint the eyes, nose and mouth with dark cake icing.

From here on, the white frosting becomes Oreo frosting: stir the crumbs in. Before this, you must have finished everything that needs pure white, because there is no going back.

Pipe a dollop of Oreo frosting. Lay the Oreo half with the thin filling layer flat on top as the body, and insert the two broken pieces on the sides as wings. Halve the pieces from the gravestone and place them on top as ears. Finally, stick on two eyes with a dab of cake icing.

The order matters here: first pipe the legs directly onto the frosting with dark cake icing, and only then place the Oreo on top as the body. If you do it the other way round, you can no longer get the piping nozzle under the biscuit. Stick the eyes onto the Oreo with a dab of icing.

Stir cocoa powder and more crumbs into the rest of the frosting until it is earthy brown. Pipe it on and sprinkle with Oreo crumbs: that is the soil. Insert the square-cut Oreo upright into it and write "R.I.P." on it with white cake icing. For writing this fine, melt the icing and fill it into a paper piping bag: from a normal piping nozzle it comes out too thick.