This past Saturday night 23 of us enjoyed Monsters Inc with Door S’mores & Make Your Own Monster Munchies cupcakes! It is still one of my favorite Pixar movies, and now we’re all caught up for the new Monsters University movie next summer. Afterwards little Boo-age Emma was running around telling everyone “BOO!” & squealing with giggles…I guess we created another monster! 
You already know I’ve been on a custom s’mores kick this summer, so of course for Monsters Inc I had to make Door S’mores! Using the same vegan graham cracker recipe, I used my pastry wheel to cut rectangles that were the proper size around 3 blocks of traditional Hershey milk chocolate bars, then I scored the panel patterns into each door and added a little dough 
ball doorknob. The bottom crackers were cut to match but no decoration added. Some doors opened right and some opened left just for variety, and I was able to squeeze out 21 sets out of the double-batch of dough.
I had thought of making monster cupcakes when I chose the movie, but how exactly? I decided I had enough vivid cupcake papers & matching sugar colors, that I would make red velvet cupcakes but also blue, green & purple velvet to match, plus cream cheese frosting even though it can be problematic in summertime. So many kids & adults have liked the decorate your own idea lately, I decided I could make assorted monster bits and we 
could all play like Mr Potato Head to assemble our own Make Your Own Monster Munchies.
Since my birthday was the day before, I wanted an easier day than marathon baking, so the only party prep I did was to have great fun piping royal icing googly eyeballs, and sculpting tentacles, teeth, horns, antennae & arms out of fondant scraps. It took too long to mix colors since so many scraps were too old & dry, so I had to get to my birthday dinner before making anything red, purple or green. I think my favorites are the little hands and the suckers on the tentacles.
The larger eyeballs looked better using the flat side, but the smaller ones had decent shape once I let the royal icing set just enough so it wasn’t sticky anymore, then tapped down the piping point into a round eyeball shape. After they were dry I used a black food coloring pen for the pupils.
My buttercream recipe is more reliable for decorating especially in summer, but I know everyone loves cream cheese frosting with red velvet even though it doesn’t last well in California heat. Cake goes stale more quickly when refrigerated, but frosted cupcakes would need to stay in the fridge if made in advance, so I made the frosting several days ahead, but I didn’t bake & frost the cupcakes until Saturday right before 
serving. From reading the recipe (see the end of this post for the full recipe), I wasn’t sure if one batch would make a full 3 dozen, so I made two batches, each separated into two colors. I probably could have made one batch & separated into four colors, since I had a lot more leftover than I expected!
Since this batter was plenty thick to spread vs. pour (probably because I’m used to oil vs. butter in my cake recipes and this was real butter AND yogurt), I tried some rainbow cupcakes with the leftovers. It was already a very thin layer of batter for 4 colors in each cupcake, so I 
doubt you’d ever be able to get more colors into cupcakes very well. It did take longer than my disher for sure, since you must carefully spread only the top of the layer to the edges without disturbing the layer underneath. If I had thought of using piping bags for the batter, that might have been easier. Not only did they work, but since I used thin white papers, the color soaked through in a lovely rainbow!
I had planned on the same easy fuzzy fur technique as the Elmo cupcakes several years ago, but that was with my reliable buttercream. This cream cheese frosting was too solid for piping or spreading right out of the fridge, and there was a very small window at the right temperature before it started melting. I figured out how to work fast enough to pipe one only inside the edges, immediately dip in the matching color sugar, gently smush so the frosting would spread to 
the edges and be completely covered. If any frosting was hanging over the paper edges at all, it started dripping pretty quickly, so I gave up on any dome frosting shape. I really like the fuzzy frosting fur matching the cupcakes & the liners!
Of course I had to make a couple example monsters of my own, and by then Louie, MJ & Benjamin had arrived, so MJ & Benjamin made some monsters with me! By then more people were arriving, so Marco & Ben helped grill the watermelon as I got more food out from the 
fridge like the cheese tray & fruit salad. Eileen is definitely a theme party kindred spirit…she brought spicy pasta as “Spa-Yeti a la Diablo – Be Careful…It’s Abominable!” complete with a sign of the Yeti serving his lemon snow cones!
I was missing the s’mores firepit action since was frantically trying to make some red tentacles & arms to add to the monster bits, so Louie nicely offered to take photos for me! Not as many s’mores photos this time, but a pretty good messy one of Benjamin…now he thinks we get s’mores every time they come to my house!
Even after years of party hosting I still can’t ever get the food quantities exactly right! This time I had TONS of leftover cupcakes, but not enough Door S’mores. I would rather people come last-minute & have fun even if they can’t RSVP, but that often means I don’t have the right quantities of food. It seems like the easy potluck idea for Cinema Brittahytta has lost its charm this year after working so well for several years, so I need menu ideas that aren’t too unhealthy for me to eat lots of leftovers when we don’t end up with a large group. If you have easy, healthy and YUMMY summer BBQ recipe ideas for a crowd, let me know!
As always, you can click to see the entire photo gallery, plus read the Rainbow Velvet Cupcake recipe…enjoy!
I wanted a red velvet recipe that had more cocoa powder, so found this one, and used the suggestions found in the recent reviews, but replaced sour cream with nonfat greek yogurt. Mine only needed 22 minutes at 325F to pass the clean toothpick test. The centers fell on a few, but they were very moist, and that left a nice indentation for plenty of frosting.
Rainbow Velvet Cupcakes
adapted from http://allrecipes.com/recipe/red-velvet-cupcakes-3/
Original Recipe Yield 30 cupcakes
(I made 2 batches, split each batch into 2 colors = red, blue, green, purple, so my yield was 6 dozen non-crowning cupcakes with room for frosting.)
Ingredients
• 2 1/2 cups flour
• 1/2 cup unsweetened cocoa powder
• 1 teaspoon baking soda
• 1/2 teaspoon salt
• 1 cup butter, softened
• 2 cups sugar
• 4 eggs
• 1 1/4 cups nonfat greek yogurt (or sour cream)
• 3/4 cups nonfat milk + 3/4 Tbsp cider vinegar (or 3/4 cups buttermilk)
• 1 (1 ounce) bottle red food coloring (or green, or purple, or blue)
• 2 teaspoons vanilla extract
• Vanilla Cream Cheese Frosting:
• 1 (8 ounce) package cream cheese, softened
• 1/4 cup butter, softened
• 2 tablespoons sour cream
• 2 teaspoons vanilla extract
• 1 (16 ounce) box confectioners’ sugar
Directions
• Preheat oven to 325 degrees F. Mix flour, cocoa powder, baking soda and salt in medium bowl. Set aside.
• Beat butter and sugar in large bowl with electric mixer on medium speed 5 minutes or until light and fluffy. Beat in eggs, one at a time. Mix in sour cream, milk, food color and vanilla. Gradually beat in flour mixture on low speed until just blended. Do not overbeat. Spoon batter into 30 paper-lined muffin cups, filling each cup 2/3 full.
• Bake 25 to 30 minutes or until toothpick inserted into cupcake comes out clean. Cool in pans on wire rack 5 minutes. Remove from pans; cool completely. Frost with Vanilla Cream Cheese Frosting.
• Vanilla Cream Cheese Frosting: Beat cream cheese, softened butter, sour cream and vanilla extract in large bowl until light and fluffy. Gradually beat in confectioners’ sugar until smooth.
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