Ready for a gory Halloween treat? Make these bloody fondant brain cupcakes!
In keeping with my Walking Dead Terminus cannibal theme, I’m sharing a ‘how-to’ on making bloody fondant brain cupcakes. Sure, I could have used frosting to mimic brains, but I really wanted to try making marshmallow fondant. So…bloody fondant brain cupcakes were born!
[Tweet “Let’s play with food! Make these bloody fondant #Halloween #cupcakes! “]
Bloody Fondant Brain Cupcakes
Two things to note before I get to the tutorial:
- I used a box red velvet cake mix for these cupcakes, but feel free to use your own recipe.
- The marshmallow fondant needs to be refrigerated for a minimum of 12 hours to firm up. I refrigerated mine for 24 hours.
Marshmallow Fondant
Ingredients:
- 1 bag of marshmallows
- 2 – 4 T. water
- 8 cups powdered sugar (more may be needed)
- oil or shortening
- red food gel
I’m not going to lie, the original recipe I chose from the web was a disaster. The water to marshmallow/powdered sugar ratio was WAY off. Luckily, I was able to salvage it by adding a ton of additional powdered sugar. If I were to make this again, I would use the Wilton Marshmallow Fondant Recipe (seen above) because it uses less water and has easy directions with an awesome video ⇓
Tips:
- Make sure to grease up your hands AND counters really well – this stuff is super sticky! I didn’t initially use enough grease and the fondant stuck to everything!
- Have extra powdered sugar as the humidity in your area can affect the moisture level in the fondant.
- Adding food coloring adds moisture, so have extra powdered sugar on hand. Also, wear food safe gloves if you don’t want food color on your hands.
- Fondant should be refrigerated for at least 12 hours to make it easier to work with.
- Unused fondant can be wrapped and kept in the refrigerator for up to a month. Place in the freezer if storing longer. Reheat in the microwave with a few drops of water if it is too hard.
Once the fondant and cupcakes are made, move on to the fun part…creating the brains!
Forming the Bloody Brain
Supplies:
- round cookie cutter or cup that is the same size as the tops of the cupcake
- rolling pin
- silpat or non-stick surface to work on
- red food coloring gel
- red icing gel (thinned out strawberry jam could be used)
- optional – food safe gloves
- optional – candy butcher knives
- Optional – I forgot to add food coloring when I melted the marshmallow. I was still able to work it in at this point to make it pink. Leave it out if you don’t want to add it.
- Roll out the fondant to about 1/8″ thick on a greased surface (even silpat will need to be greased).
- Use the round cookie cutter or cup to cut out circles.
- Place the circles on top of each cupcake.
- Squeeze a small portion of red icing gel onto each circle. Spread it on to lightly coat it. This will help the ‘brain’ fondant pieces stick to it. Strawberry jam can be used too.
- Take small pieces of fondant and roll out to thin 1/8″ logs.
- Place a strip down the center of each fondant circle to divide the two brain sections.
- Add the remaining rolled fondant in squiggly lines on each side of the ‘brain’.
- Spread more red icing gel onto the ‘brain’. Use a fine brush or light spread with your finger. The red icing gel gives the tops a sleek wet look.
- Optional – add a candy butcher knife and red icing gel around the knife.
Completed Bloody Fondant Brain Cupcakes
Here are the finished bloody fondant brain cupcakes. The top one has no red coloring in the fondant, the bottom left has some coloring (this is my favorite), and the bottom right has the most coloring.
I even had enough fondant to make a few bloody cut fingers too! On a side note, I did have to leave some of the cupcakes plain because my youngest teenage son refused to eat the bloody brain cupcakes or the finger cupcakes. He said it was so gross looking, which means I did a pretty good job 🙂
More Halloween food ideas…

Kim~madeinaday says
These actually look like something I can do! I’m so not great at cupcakes! Shared everywhere! #MM
Kim
Erlene at My Pinterventures says
These were really fun to make. I’m now a fondant lover and want to use it on everything…lol.