Oreo cupcakes for Halloween

Whisk the eggs with the sugar and the Flavour paste for vanilla, then add the milk and the melted butter. Sieve the flour, cocoa, Baking powder and salt into a second bowl.

Sieving really pays off here: cocoa likes to form lumps, and those won't dissolve in the finished batter.

Add the dry ingredients to the wet ones and stir only until no flour is visible. Every extra minute develops the gluten in the flour, and the cupcake turns tough instead of light.

Place the baking cups in the cupcake tin and put one whole Oreo in each, flat side down with the filling facing up. Use the portioner to add two portions of batter on top, until the cup is about two-thirds full.

No more than that: the batter rises in the oven, and an overflowing cupcake can't be decorated neatly.

Bake the cupcakes at 170 °C convection for 16 minutes and do the skewer test in the middle. It's intended that the Oreo at the bottom stays soft.

Then let the cupcakes cool down completely. A frosting made of butter and cream cheese melts at the slightest residual heat.

Beat the soft butter with the fondant using the flat beater until the mixture is light and fluffy. Give the fondant time: it is firm at first and only becomes smooth through beating.

Fold in the cream cheese only at the very end and only briefly. If it is beaten for too long it becomes runny, and a runny frosting does not hold its shape.

Cut everything before you start with the frosting, sticky fingers make this tedious.

For the gravestone, cut a whole Oreo straight along two sides so it becomes angular. Keep the offcuts: they will be the bat's ears. For the bat, open one Oreo. The half with the filling is the body, and you break the other half into two pieces for the wings. Finally, crush five Oreos for the frosting and the soil.

Spread a thin layer of white frosting over the cupcake, it only serves as glue. Then dip it upside down into the Oreo crumbs until the surface is covered in dark.

Now pipe white frosting criss-cross over it with the star ribbon nozzle, deliberately uneven: the disorder is what makes the mummy, and every bandage stands out against the dark base. Place two Candy eyes in a gap, done.

Pipe a high dollop of white frosting and place the cupcake upside down on baking paper. This flattens the dome evenly, as is hard to achieve by hand. Lift it off carefully and use dark cake icing in a cornet to paint the eyes, nose and mouth.

Only once the mummy and ghost are finished do you stir the Oreo crumbs into the remaining frosting. From here on it is speckled brown, and it will no longer be white.

Pipe a dollop of Oreo frosting with the star tip. Lay the Oreo half with the filling facing up flat on top as the body, and push the two broken pieces in at the sides as wings. Halve the pieces from the headstone and place them on top as ears. Fix the eyes in place 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 an Oreo on top as the body. Done the other way round, you can no longer reach under the cookie with the tip. Stick the eyes onto the Oreo with a dab of icing.

Stir cocoa and more crumbs into the rest of the frosting until it is earthy brown. Pipe it on and sprinkle Oreo crumbs over it, which is the soil.

Push the square-cut Oreo in upright and write «R.I.P.» on it with white cake icing. For such fine lettering, fill the melted icing into a cornet and cut off only a tiny tip.