Monday 26 August 2013

This little zombie went to the market...

And THIS little zombie went om-nom-nom-nom all the way home (after eating your brains out).

Zombies: "Cannibalistic creatures portrayed as reanimated corpses, or mindless human beings." Interesting. A 'zombie' also originated in Africa as a snake god. I'm not really a person who would go out of my way to watch zombie movies (or snake movies), but I admit that I have seen a few in my 28 years. I will also admit that almost each and every time, I go to bed with the lights ON, a weird feeling in my tummy, and an unexplainable itchy scalp...

As anyone who's seen more than one zombie movie, you'll agree that they're all just a bit different. Unless you've seen all of them, in which case, they probably aren't all that different... Wikipedia has a list of 642 zombie movies that have been made. That's almost scarier than zombies themselves!

According to WatchMojo, the Top 10 out of that list of zombie movies are:

10. [REC]
9. Zombie 2
8. Dead Snow
7. Braindead
6. Zombieland
5. Shaun of the Dead
4. Return of the Living Dead
3. 28 Days Later
2. Dawn of the Dead
1. Night of the Living Dead

Did you know that the first zombie movie was The Cabinet of Dr. Caligari, made in 1920!? That's almost 100 years ago! The people who starred in that movie probably would be dead now, but that's not the point! Zombies totally have their own movie genre!

What type of movie zombie might you be dealing with?


Now, I don't just randomly research zombies for fun. I did it because I was asked to make zombie cupcakes for a zombie movie fanatic's birthday! Zombie cupcakes! I honestly wouldn't have thought that this would be something I'd ever make, but that's life - Always like a box of chocolates... Or an unexpected zombie lurking behind the door you've just opened...

I eventually referred to cartoons for inspiration. Somehow, they're much less confronting! Also because my 10 year old saw me looking up zombie things, and he thought I was surprising him with a Plants vs. Zombies themed party for next year! Ha! Good luck mate. Let me get through this week first.


I reached the point where I had to stop watching YouTube and start making the cupcakes. So, I started with some hands. Giant. Flesh coloured. Will-soon-hopefully-be-zombie. Hands.


N.B. They're not that giant, they're just resting on a teeny tiny mini rolling pin, that I used for some cake decorating themed party bags over the weekend.

I poked toothpicks into the bottoms (well, technically 'arms') of them, because I've learnt from the Smurf head cupcakes that using toothpicks -or something- is incredibly important to stabilise what you have on top of the cupcake if it risks being too heavy. It is also equally as important to inform those eating the cupcakes, to watch out for the toothpick in it.

The hands were made, and I placed them in my trusty ping pong ball container so that the fingers curled a bit. All about those small realistic details, I guess.

In the morning, I went back to Google and found some more inspiration: Blood! Dirt! Stitches! Lollipops! ... Oops, wrong page.

With black cake paint, I became a make-up artist! I may have a future career in zombie movie cosmetics - who knows? I thought the stitches were a good touch. But it was missing something... So with red cake paint, I added blood smears - or at least that's what it was supposed to look like! I may have gotten a bit carried away, though.


But, I now had zombie hands! Yay! (Why am I excited about armless zombies??)

Knowing that Milo wasn't to be an option for the cupcakes, I thought about what could be used for the 'dirt'... Because. Well. Obviously, zombies come up out of the ground, from their graves, right to your house to eat your brains out... Mmm, food. I had used crushed Oreos for my worm cupcakes, so that will work well for these, too. They kind of match, in a way. Zombies are rotting corpses who eat flesh; worms eat the flesh of the rotting corpses... It's like the circle of life!!


I then ate the rest of the Oreos. Om-nom-nom!

The toothpicks worked great. The crushed Oreos worked great. Despite my research, I'm still not quite the expert on zombies (or zombie movies), but here are the zombie cupcakes finished:


I figured that I should probably prepare for the 643rd zombie movie (as should you!), so, here's some of Zombieland's rules for surviving a zombie apocalypse:

In the meantime, though, enjoy the little things!!
Like movies, cupcakes... and funny zombie pranks on YouTube :)

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