Halloween '12, Zebra Cupcakes!

Happy belated Halloween!

So we kinda almost didn't have a Halloween this year on the east coast due to Hurricane Sandy.  We will get to that later.  Warning, this post is long with lots of pictures and equine color ranting.

Roadside landscaping horse in fall attire.

In the mean time, I was lucky enough to have a Halloween get together at my place right before Sandy was a problem.  I wanted to bake something for my friends that was a little out of the ordinary.  And while I was checking out the store aisles I started to notice that there are a lot of black and white foods described as "ZEBRA (insert food here)".  A good example are those Zebra Marshmallows we here at VP reviewed before.  This time I finally decided to buy a box of those Little Debbie brand Zebra Cakes that have been staring at me whenever I pick up rootbeer.

I never really have been a fan of processed cakes.  To sweet for me personally.  But, with the equid theme of the cakes and being the writer of a blog on virtual equids, why not?  Sadly upon purchase I started overthinking this whole zebra-themed-foods thing.  Like how most of these zebra foods are white based with black stripes.

 
Heather's horse Beauty does not care either way.  She lurves them.

And this starts getting into the argument of "Are zebras black with white stripes, or white with black stripes?"

WARNING: HORSE COLOR INFO AHEAD

The real answer is kinda neither.  Zebras are dark based animals, their skin is black and not pink.  So from the dark skin alone, zebra's are not white with black stripes.  But hair is different from the skin.  Take a look at the extinct Quagga.  This subspecies of plain's zebra has brown tones showing on the rump while the stripes on their front half dilute and concentrate pigment so extremely their stripes are black and white.  So zebras are dark based with an extreme dun-like dilution as seen in horses.

And these zebra cakes are so skimpy on the chocolate stripes they should be called Quagga Cakes.  How do they taste?  If anyone says they can taste the chocolate, they have super-human tastebuds.  They honestly taste like hexagon shaped Twinkies.

Zebra imposter!

 Heather, however could not participate in this part of edible blog-fodder, due to recently being diagnosed with lactose intolerance, and Celiac disease.  This means milk and gluten (wheat) are no longer friends of her stomach.  And those two things are nearly in everything to begin with.  Let's take a look at the Zebra Cake ingredients.

Red = Gluten, Green = Milk, Purple = possibly contains gluten or milk

Owch.

As a crazy horse color enthusiast, I thought we can make it better, more accurate, better tasting even.  And for the sake of our co-producer Heather, lactose and gluten free.  To Michael's craft store!

Zebra colored cupcake liners?

 

And zebra stripe brownie tattoos?  

And the tatoos are made by Duff from Ace of Cakes?  Hecks yes!

Now for the diagram!

The anatomy of a zebra hide from the outside in is as follows.  Diluted and concentrated colored black and white hair, dark skin, meaty zebra center.   This translates into Zebra brownie tatoos (they have both dark and light stripes to represent the color concentration and dilution in the zebra's hair, chocolate frosting (for the dark skin), and a red velvet center.

We got the recipe for the gluten and dairy free cupcakes made with coconut flour and coconut oil instead of wheat flour and butter from Elana's Pantry.  Love her site.

To make the cupcakes look like red velvet I got red food dye.  However we weren't 100% sure it was gluten free (no listed gluten ingredients, but didn't state if it contained wheat on the labels) so only half were made with the dye just to be safe.

  Stabby bottle opening goodness! 

The red just makes this more... disturbing.

 We suggest letting your eggs reach room temp before adding in liquid coconut oil.  It solidified in the chilled eggs.  It's a Halloween post, gross stuff can be shown.

After pouring the fully blended batter in the zebra liners we had some batter left over.

 So I made a pink cupcake pancake.

The cupcakes upon leaving the over were for some reason not as red.  That one on the bottom right had the most dye in it too.

 Frosting was applied and then the brownie tattoos were cut into circles.

These things feel like a thin film of pudding skin.  And when placed they latch onto the moisture in the frosting melding onto the surface of the cupcake.

  And then we had some pretty cool looking treats.

 You decide which looks more zebra-like.

But when cut into, they weren't as red as desired.  So I fixed it.  

 Yay, blood red food dye.  Happy Halloween!

~~~~~

Hurricane Sandy came through and power is still out in some areas.  I was without power for a few days, and Heather still doesn't have any.  Our update on visiting the Dominant White Standardbred Colt is delayed.

I do find this meme photo a bit eerie given our last VP blog post.

We had a tree uprooted and leaning on the electrical cables.

And what do you do with a ton of heavy cream, and no power to keep it refridgerated?  You empty a mason jar and make butter!

In the aftermath I found this drawing a child did for their grandparents completely saturated into the ground.  It was still legible, but if you tried to pick it up, it would have disintegrated.

Hopefully things in the Garden State will be returning to normal soon.  Wait...  There is a nor'easter snow storm on it's way?

 #*&@$!