Alolan Muk Cupcakes!



I absolutely loved seeing all of @jammycooks‘ many Alolan Muk treats, so I was inspired to make my own recipe based on the sludge Pokémon! Here are my Alolan Muk cupcakes with a surprise inside!



More pics and instructions below!

Grimer and Muk were among many Kanto Pokémon to get new Alola-exclusive forms in Pokémon Sun and Moon. According to the Pokémon website, Grimer were brought to Alola to deal with the garbage problem, and they ate so much of it their form changed. Nothing beats Muk’s colourful new form, though!

To make these cupcakes, you will need:



One vanilla cupcake recipe for 12 cupcakes

Gel food colours

One buttercream icing recipe

Mini marshmallows or white Wilton Candy Melts

Ziplock baggies

I started by preparing my cupcake recipe. I made mine from scratch, but you can use a box mix, too! Prepare your batter plus four bowls with food colouring to get the four colours of Alolan Muk!



I found I had to do some colour mixing to get the shades I wanted. Yellow was the easiest, for the pink I used pink dye with a bit of purple, the green included green, blue and some black, and the blue used blue and a touch of black.



Now you want to make your cake a rainbow! Prepare your cupcake sheet with liners, and add a spoonful of each colour at a time. I followed Alolan Muk’s colour palette from the bottom up, making sure the blue layers were smaller. I started with a tablespoon of yellow, then a teaspoon of blue, then a tablespoon of green, then a teaspoon of blue, and lastly a tablespoon of pink!



Here’s what the cupcakes look like when they’re halfway filled to the green layer! You can see the blue and yellow poking out from a few of them. Try not to play with the batter too much - lightly spread it with the back of your spoon if need be to get an even layer of each colour, but it’s not really necessary.

I also started half of my cupcakes with a blue layer before adding a yellow layer. This was totally unnecessary, and I was a bit short on my blue batter because of it. Start with yellow for the best results!

Batter’s all used up and the cupcakes are in the oven!

Cupcakes fresh out of the oven! You can mostly only see the top pink layer, and I was a bit surprised to see other layers peeking through. Since they’ll all get frosted we don’t have to worry about that, though!

I let the cupcakes cool overnight, then they’re ready to decorate! I prepared my buttercream icing in four separate bags with one corner snipped off (plus some extra white if I needed), along with some mini marshmallows and white Candy Melts for Muk’s toxic crystals!

I started decorating from the bottom up, just like I did with the batter. I used the yellow icing to make a zig-zagged line running along the edge of the bottom half of each cupcake. I then lay down a thinner blue line above and just on top of the yellow line, and continued with each colour in the same pattern as the batter until the cupcake top was covered entirely. This gave a layered effect to the cupcakes I quite liked.

I tried both Candy Melts and mini marshmallows for Muk’s crystals. I used a sharp knife to randomly cut up the Candy Melt disks into jagged pieces, and was able to stick the bigger pieces up in the icing to give it a more 3D look. Warm hands can melt the candy, so work quickly!



I tore the mini marshmallows up by hand, and their stickiness helped in adhering them to the cupcakes, but it also made them a bit tough to handle. Overall, I like the way the Candy Melts look more like crystals, but I kind of preferred the marshmallows!



I also tried decorating the cupcakes when the icing got a bit runnier. The effect looks a lot more sludgy and smooth, which is pretty cool, but it was messier and a bit harder to work with.



Here’s what the cupcakes look like split open! We’ve get Alolan Muk both on the outside and on the inside - double the Muk!

While I wouldn’t have thought much of Alolan Muk, Jammy really inspired me to try something new! These were a blast to make - while a bit time-consuming, they were very easy, and the final result is sure to wow any crowd!

