Yea and verily, it has been a busy week for Skill Up Skillet. Within a couple days of finishing the Adipose Marshmallows I was tasked with making cupcakes for the midnight release of Mortal Kombat X at the local Bridgewater Falls GameStop. Of course, I wasn’t about to simply shell out a box of plain old cupcakes, slap on some frosting, and call it a day (even though a few GameStop employees told me it would work). Nope! This week we’re making ‘surprise inside’ cupcakes decorated Mortal Kombat Minimalist style. Because this is a thing. Each chocolate cupcake has a special core of color (Kore of Kolor? Hmmm…) reflecting the color of the combatant’s mask. I am really tempted to replace words starting with the letter ‘C’ for words starting with the letter ‘K’, following the Mortal Kombat tradition. Reeeeeeeally tempted.
For those of you who might not know:
Red – Ermac
Yellow – Scorpion
Green – Reptile
Blue – Sub-Zero
Silver – Smoke
Stay tuned at the end of the post for several photos taken at the event as well. Ready? Let’s go.
Gamers, grab your mats:
ROUND ONE!
- 1 boxed cake mix, chocolate
- 1 boxed cake mix, white
- cake mix add ins: mine required vegetable oil, water, and eggs
- concentrated gel food coloring
- patience
Start by preparing your cake mixes according to packaged instructions, including preheating the oven and placing the cupcake liners in the cupcake trays. Divide white cake mix evenly into five separate bowls.Tint divided white cake red, yellow, green, and blue. Leave one bowl white.
Note: You may want to adjust volume somewhat depending on if you want your non-combatant cupcakes to have a colored core, however. This week I subscribed to the philosophy of “Let the chips fall where they may”.
As you can see, I used a special cupcake insert from Wilton that is used to create unique multi-tonal cupcakes. If you don’t have anything like this you could buy some PVC pipe for a similar effect. Set the insert into the first row of your lined cupcake tray and spoon in your colored core. You only need to fill the cavities 1/2-2/3rds full. I, of course, suck at measuring and ended up with 3/4 and almost full cavities. Hooray, huge cupcakes?
Next, fill in the outer circle with your chocolate cake mixture. Again, 1/2-2/3rds full is the goal here.
Remove insert from tray and allow any excess to drip off a bit. This will need to be rinsed thoroughly so you can get your other colored cores without blending.
Note: I used the straight white cake mix for the center of the Smoke cupcakes.
Bake according to package instructions. You should get at least 24 cupcakes, even if you fill the cups too damn full like me. Allow to cool completely and remove cupcakes from baking tray.
ROUND TWO!
- white frosting, 1-2 cans depending on cupcake yield.
- red, yellow, green, blue, and black decorative icing, prepackaged (I have two black pictured but you’ll most likely only need one for 24 cupcakes)
- if you can’t find silver or gray icing, either make up a batch of your own with white icing and black food coloring or use edible food powder/dust. I picked up a tube of silver at my local craft store.
- about another 5 gallons of patience
For this part, best work in groups of three. This technique will be demonstrated in Ermac Red. Start by frosting your group of three with your white frosting.
Okay. This part really sucks to explain. Please be a visual learner for me? Just for a minute? Thanks.
The great thing about these packaged icings is, you can uncap them, screw on a tip, and you’re good to go. For the combatant faces we’ll be using a #5 tip. For the Fatality printed cupcakes, a #3. You should be using at least two #5 tips, or you will be pulling a ton of cleaning duty. With tips costing under a dollar, I recommend investing in a few. Buy metal if you can; I’ve found that plastic does not promote very clean icing flow.
Using your black, pipe a design similar to this on your cupcake. I swear this will make sense in the end.
Next, take a wooden skewer and use it to spread the icing over top of the white. Really make the most of those thick lines and tamp it into place.
Add in your red (or yellow, or green, or blue) face with a swirl:
As with the cowl, tamp the face mask in. Be sure to leave room for where the eyes would be.
Note: Google Image search ‘Mortal Combat 3 Minimalist’ if you need to work off of an image.
You made a ninja face. Freehanded. AREN’T YOU JUST SO FREAKING COOL? Do your nerdy victory dance if no one’s watching. Screw it. Do your nerdy victory dance especially if someone’s watching. Repeat this process for the other combatant faces. It will take time. It will take patience. It will be worth it. For Smoke, you can be very careful and shake a little silver dust on the ‘face’ and spread to make the mask, or you can mix some of the silver dust in with some lemon juice and paint the mask on. If you go with Method 2 you will need to let the white frosting set before painting the mask.
The Fatality cupcakes were done in red lettering with a #3 tip and somehow fit in one line (because at this point it’s 30 minutes before I had to leave for the event and, damn it, I was not about to do it twice. It is amazing what you can achieve if you’re motivated.) Due to severe time constraints I was unable to take pictures of the Mortal Kombat Dragon in progress. For that, I apologize. I can tell you, however, that it used the same technique as the faces, just with a different shape.
FINAL ROUND!
Somehow I managed to pack these up and arrive just in time for goodies. Yay, goodies! I got a black t-shirt with white ‘Kombat’ written on the front, a poster, temporary tattoos, and a GameStop lanyard. We came, we played a Mortal Kombat demo, we ate cupcakes, we conquered. It was a fun night and I’m still exhausted.
Are you ready for event pictures? Here they are!
Well, that was fun. Let’s never do that on a Monday night again. Seriously, Fatality. Still so tired. Ready to be excited for next week? Next week is ARBOR DAY! And we’re going to plant a TREE. A Soft Pretzel Groot Tree! (You really thought I lost my marbles for a second, didn’t you.)
OK I AM GOING TO GO FIND A QUIET CORNER AND TAKE A NAP NOW.
Cheers,
Leisel
Skill Up Skillet 
I actually play video games to keep my mind healthy
and I am 72 years old.
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