Jenn McKinley | Dark Chocolate Demise

One of the many things I love about writing the cupcake bakery mysteries is the amount of cupcakes I am required to eat, for research purposes of course. It is incredible to me how many varieties of cupcakes are out there these days. Honestly, I’ve seen everything from grilled cheese and tomato soup to beer and peanuts. Yes, I’m serious. Literally, if you can think it, it can be baked into a cupcake.

When I decided to set DARK CHOCOLATE DEMISE against the back drop of a zombie walk in Old Town Scottsdale, I knew I was going to have to whip up some cupcakes that would reflect the appropriate undead ambiance. My first thought was naturally about brains. For the uninitiated, that is what zombies prefer to eat; gray matter, noggins, think tanks, noodles, well, you get the idea, they eat brains. But I couldn’t have cupcakes that just looked like brains. First, EW, and second, how many varieties of flavored brains could a baker bake? No, there had to me more.

With the first flavor of cupcake being a no brainer (forgive me), the cupcake girls piped strawberry frosting to resemble brains onto strawberry cupcakes. Perfect, right? But then what? I mulled it over and decided that I needed something to represent where our victim is found, which is in a prop coffin. Dark chocolate cupcakes with a chocolate candy coffin lid seemed spot on. I assure you a lot of baking was required to get this one just right. Next I wanted to represent the vanilla cupcake. But how? I wanted something that would appeal to a zombie horde, but I was stumped.

This is when I hit up my R and D department, yes, research and development, otherwise known as my hooligans. I presented the problem to them and they shrugged as if the answer was so obvious they couldn’t believe I didn’t get it on my own. Eyeballs, they informed me, the vanilla cupcakes needed gummy eyeballs stuck on the top of them. Ah, of course, how could I have missed it? Excellent. Now I wanted one more cupcake to round it all out. According to a national survey, the most popular flavor of cupcake is the chocolate cupcake with vanilla icing. Who knew? Well, now I did and I wanted to use it but again I was not inspired. I spent several hours scrolling through pictures of scary cupcakes until I came across the mummy. Fabulous.

A chocolate cupcake with vanilla icing piped flat, using a basketweave pastry tip to make it look like bandages with candy eyeballs, or any small round candy placed to look as if they were peering through the bandages, was an adorable addition to the brains, eyeballs, and coffin cupcakes. The best part was taste testing all of the different cupcakes, and the hooligans really excelled at the portion of the research.

It was so much fun to create these cupcakes, almost as much fun as writing the story, and I’ve included the recipes in the back of the book so you can let your own ghoulish baker out. And now here’s a brief description of DARK CHOCOLATE DEMISE so you can see what shenanigans the gang is up to this time! Scottsdale, Arizona, may not be the liveliest place on earth, but it’s never been as dead as this. Hundreds of fans have gathered together for the first annual Old Town Zombie Walk, and Mel, Angie, and the Fairy Tale Cupcake crew are donning their best undead attire to sell some horror-themed desserts to the hungry hordes.

But the fun turns to fright when Mel finds a real dead body in a prop casket outside of the bakery’s truck—and the corpse looks alarmingly like a zombie of their own. Knowing that Joe, Angie’s brother and Mel’s former flame, has been working on a dangerous mob case, Mel worries that the murder is a hit gone wrong and that someone near and dear was the real target. To keep any of her friends from winding up six feet under, Mel will do whatever it takes to find a killer—no matter how scary things get...

So, go get your zombie on and come with me on the latest adventure of the cupcake gang!

Happy Reading,

Jenn

About DARK CHOCOLATE DEMISE

The New York Times bestselling Cupcake Bakery Mysteries bake up sweet surprises, but as the series continues, Mel and Angie are in for a fresh batch of trouble…

Scottsdale, Arizona, may not be the liveliest place on earth, but it’s never been as dead as this. Hundreds of fans have gathered together for the first annual Old Town Zombie Walk, and Mel, Angie, and the Fairy Tale Cupcake crew are donning their best undead attire to sell some horror-themed desserts to the hungry hordes.

But the fun turns to fright when Mel finds a real dead body in a prop casket outside of the bakery’s truck—and the corpse looks alarmingly like a zombie of their own. Knowing that Joe, Angie’s brother and Mel’s former flame, has been working on a dangerous mob case, Mel worries that the murder is a hit gone wrong and that someone near and dear was the real target. To keep any of her friends from winding up six feet under, Mel will do whatever it takes to find a killer—no matter how scary things get...