Lily Vanilli's A Zombie Ate My Cupcake! is not your typical cupcake recipe book. Gone are the pastel colours, cutesy decorations and lilac sprinkles. Instead  there are 25 horror-inspired recipes - everything from the freakishly realistic 'Bleeding Hearts' to 'Sweeney Todd's Surprise', a sweet treat disguised as a pie with a human finger poking out.

Gross as these recipes might sound, the blurb assures us that they 'always taste divine'. Of course the only way to test this out was to make them and eat them. This is such a hard job sometimes...

Rainbow Cupcakes

These ones caught my eye straight away - psychedelic sponge, sparkly gold bits and icing bluer than those Smarties they had to ban. As a relative newcomer to cupcake making (I'm generally better at scoffing them), I also wanted something that looked fairly easy - anything involving piping was always going to be a disaster. Ignoring the fact that the recipe required me to form seven concentric circles with cake batter (pah easy!) this one looked pretty doable.

In terms of ingredients, the sponge was pretty standard, apart from the need for food colouring 'in the seven colours of the rainbow'. If that seems a bit extravagant then save money by doing a bit of mixing - red and yellow to make orange, blue and yellow to make green etc. I also had to innovate when it came to the decoration, since coconut shavings (for the gold bits) apparently don't exist in Wales. Rather than shave a coconut myself - no doubt incurring some horrendous injury in the process - I decided gold marshmallows would be equally suitable. Plus then I had an excuse to eat the 300 leftover marshmallows.

The only other slightly weird ingredient I needed was Gold Luster Dust, which turns out to be a fine, edible powder that looks a bit like those pots of sparkly eye shadow girls love when they're 13 (don't try using that instead). I found this at a specialist cake shop, along with some shiny cupcake cases that I simply HAD to have (£4? BARGAIN!)

Having accumulated my various ingredients, it was time to get creative. Everything was pretty straightforward and the recipes were very clear to follow - I even managed a few vaguely concentric splodges when it came to dispensing the various cake batters. If you're sad like me then you will find great enjoyment from mixing all the different colours in various bowls, if not then you will at least appreciate the finished result when they come out of the oven - sooo colourful! 

The icing was easy to whip up as well, although in both cases I benefited from the use of an electric mixer. If you're doing it all by hand then prepare for a bit more effort (but hey, think of the arm muscles you'll get). After adding some white icing 'clouds' and my golden marshmallows the finished cakes looked pretty good, and even better after cutting into them to reveal the rainbow effect inside. More importantly, they tasted amazing. A winner! 

Shattered Glass Cupcakes

Flushed with success from the Rainbow Cupcakes I moved on to a slightly more adventurous recipe - the Shattered Glass cupcakes. These involved making edible sugar glass, which they apparently use in movie sets (the book also informed me that there is a dust cloud in the centre of the universe containing raspberry flavour chemicals, and that Devil's Food cake got it's name because of the red colouring and not because it contains a gazillion calories).

I used vanilla cupcakes for this one (although the book contains recipes for anything from Red Velvet to Honey & Almond sponges). Topped with vanilla frosting, these looked tasty, but the true crowning glory is a shard of sugar glass sticking out from the cake with a grim trickle of blood (cherry sauce) oozing out.

Unfortunately, the sugar glass turned out to be my nemesis. Containing water, sugar, cream of tartar and liquid glucose (otherwise known as the stickiest substance on earth), it sounded pretty simple - boil the lot up in a pan and then leave it on a baking tray to cool. Perhaps it's because I got fed up after 10 minutes when the mixture hadn't reached 150 degrees as specified (you need a thermometer to measure it), but many hours of cooling later (and after a quick session in the freezer) my sugar glass was in fact sugar gloop, and I realised this one was a bit beyond me. The cakes still tasted good though.

Verdict

This is a great looking book, with a combination of perfectly-styled photographs and cool illustrations. There's a big variety of recipes and the option to mix and match your favourite sponge and frosting with different decorations. 

In terms of equipment and ingredients, the recipes do require a bit of investment - this is probably one for the cupcake enthusiast who wants to build up their repertoire with some really original designs. That being said, with a bit of practise I'm sure most people could create something impressive using A Zombie Ate My Cupcake - I'll definitely be serving some up at Halloween!