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Bewitching Breads: Hot Cross Black Widows

Source of Recipe

Creepy Cuisine, Lucy Munroe


List of Ingredients

To make muffins:
1 tablespoon butter or margarine
1 egg
1/4 cup vegetable oil
1 cup milk
2 cups all-purpose flour
3 teaspoons baking powder
1 teaspoon salt
1/4 cup sugar

To make frosting:
4 ounces cream cheese -- softened
3 tablespoons unsalted butter -- at room temperature
1 1/2 cups powdered sugar
1/2 teaspoon vanilla extract
juice of 1/4 lemon --or 1 teaspoon bottled lemon juice
red food coloring
yellow food coloring
green food coloring
blue food coloring
black licorice strings


Recipe

Preheat the oven to 400 degrees. Grease the bottoms, but not the sides, of 12
medium-sized muffin cups with the butter or margarine. Beat the egg in a large bowl
with a fork. Stir in the vegetable oil and milk. Combine the flour, baking powder, salt
and sugar in a small mixing bowl and stir together. Add to the egg mixture. Stir lightly
until the dry ingredients are barely moistened. The batter should be lumpy. Fill the
muffin cups 3/4 full of batter. Bake for 20 to 30 minutes, or until the muffins turn
golden brown. Carefully remove from the oven, turn out of the pan and set on a rack to
cool.

To prepare frosting, mix cream cheese and butter together with an electric mixer.
Slowly add powdered sugar and continue beating. Add vanilla extract and lemon juice,
and mix thoroughly. Put a small portion of frosting in a separate bowl and mix into it a
few drops of red food coloring. Set aside. Color the remaining frosting, drop by drop,
with red, yellow, green and blue food coloring until it is black.

With a rubber spatula,
spread the black frosting on top of each muffin. Then add a small red Black Widow
hourglass to each one. Add legs to your spiders using licorice whip strings. You may
need to cut the licorice into shorter pieces. Place arachnids on a platter and serve. You
may want to decorate the platter with fake spider webs.