For those who may not have seen Hannibal (like anyone really needs me to tell them), it's a television series created by Pushing Daisies and Dead Like Me creater Bryan Fuller. It's essentially a crime or procedural drama based on characters from Thomas Harris's 1981 novel Red Dragon (which has been adapted for film twice: Man Hunter in 1986, written and directed by Michael Mann, and Red Dragon in 2002, written by Ted Tally and directed by Brett Ratner). Will Graham (Hugh Dancy) is a talented criminal profiler, now teaching at the FBI training academy. He is recruited back into the field by the head of the Behavioural Sciences Unit, Agent Jack Crawford (Laurence Fishburne). Will's talent stems from an empathy disorder, which enables him to empathise with and get inside the mind of serial killers. But it comes at a price, making Will very sensitive and potentially mentally unstable, and so Crawford keeps an eye on him with the help of Dr Alana Bloom (Caroline Dhavernas), a Psychology professor, FBI consultant, and former student of renowned psychologist Dr Hannibal Lecter (Mads Mikkelsen). Lecter becomes a friend, therapist, and something of a mentor for Will.
The series has come under some fire for its violence, and average ratings in the US made it something of an endangered species over at NBC. At first I found the series oddly clinical, and the heavy tone and dark atmosphere felt a little forced in conjunction with the procedural element. And I wondered if we'd seen enough of the complicated investigator character whose possible mental illness or social disorder or what-have-you makes them extremely gifted at their work. But Byran Fuller is pretty good at what he does, and I started to like Will Graham and Dr Lecter and remembered that flawed, complex characters are absolutely essential to good television, and suddenly I became hooked. The cinematography is absolutely stunning, and the relationship between Lecter and Graham is so expertly developed. You're not sure if you want Graham to catch Lecter, or vice versa, or if you'll be sad their bromance has to be ruined by such a petty little thing as one of them being a vicious serial killer and cannibal who insists on testing the boundaries of the other's mental health out of little more than professional curiosity. I feel like once we were introduced to Crawford's trainee Miriam Lass (and her fate), everything fell so beautifully into place. I got goosebumps at the end of episode 6, "Entrée."
Will's mental health is another thing that is beautifully portrayed in the series, including the recurring image of what fans have called a Ravenstag and what most, and I think Fuller has called on his Twitter, a Wendigo: a black stag covered in what appears to be the feathers of a Raven. It's a metaphor for evil, for the deterioration of Will's mind, and a warning of what Will perhaps knows but doesn't want to see: that Hannibal, someone he has trusted with his life on several occasions, is the most dangerous man he will ever meet.
So I thought, given my ridiculous need to bake things (I can't really tell you why I've suddenly felt the need to make anything more than videos of my cat on Instagram), what better way to celebrate this amazing image from Hannibal than to turn it into a cupcake? A lovely, little cupcake?
For this I've basically used this Nigella Lawson recipe for Chocolate Cherry cupcakes.
The only thing I've changed are the following:
Instead of using cherry jam I used blackberry jam, partly because I thought maybe it suited the dark nature of this creature but mostly because I thought the label said black cherry. I want to tell you I wasn't wearing my glasses, but... I was.
Because the beauty of this recipe is that it's so simple yet delicious, I've decided to make it more time-consuming and difficult by adding antlers, or chocolate-coated pretzels resembling antlers.
The cupcakes were really easy, check out the recipe because it's a good one, and the batter smelled amazing. Here are some pictures of how it went down.
Nigella's recipe makes 12 cupcakes, but my batter made 9 cupcakes, and I filled the patty cases about two-thirds of the way full. I never actually know precisely how much to spoon into the cases, so I just use this massive measuring spoon I have. I'm sure people much more coordinated and, well, legit good at this racket can use an ice cream scoop. I've tried before. And failed.
Shit! Look at that! They turned out ok! They actually sank a little before I could take a photo of them (the ole iphone battery went flat), but that's ok. YOLO. Or something. But I just read the recipe properly and it says to use self-raising flour. I used plain flour because that's what I'm used to and not seeing the addition of baking soda and/or baking powder in the recipe didn't make me think twice at all. Whoops. I did just taste one and it was gooey inside, kind of like a pudding or friand, or a cupcake I fucked up by using the wrong flour. Great! Exactly what I was going for! Dark, rich, and weird on the inside. Sounds like Will's evil Patronus to me!
Now, onto those chocolate-dipped pretzel antlers! I melted 100 grams of dark chocolate in the microwave. Ain't nobody, and by nobody I mean me, got time for trying to melt it in a bowl over a saucepan full of water. Also, I'd just used the saucepan to make this mother flipping cupcake batter.
After realising it's super hard to break the pretzels to look like antlers, instead of giving up like a normal person, I kept trying. And sort of succeeded. The great thing about making these pretzels antlers is that you end up eating almost an entire bag of pretzels to get enough broken pretzels to resemble antlers. Silver lining! Coincidentally, silver lining is what I placed them on when I was done! Because I had no baking paper. Professional!
Now the fun part: making, and not eating in the process, the ganache. Cream and chocolate, y'all. Straight from Nigella's amazing recipe. A recipe that would be more amazing if you use the ingredients listed in it. Yay!
When you've essentially blown up all of your $10 electric mixers, you're hoping whisking by hand is actually possible even if you're not Nigella. And the answer is... yeah, I guess you can. It looks like ganache, ok? So...I think it worked.
I can already tell which one is going to be hidden in the photos of the finished project. Encouraging!
Now time for those antlers I made earlier, and... wow. They actually don't look that bad.
Against all odds.
There's definitely a resemblance there... Right...?
So there you go. Chocolate Blackberry Cupcakes with chocolate dipped pretzels, inspired by the NBC television series Hannibal. That seem like they're sort of ok to eat. Now go and watch the show. And check out the official Tumblr.
Little-known fact: I was reading Wikipedia (translation: getting all of my information about the show from Wikipedia) and there was this little piece: David Tennant just missed out on playing Dr Hannibal Lecter. Knowledge!
UPDATE: I made the cupcakes again using black cherry jam (I didn't imagine it!) and used milk chocolate for the ganache and they went exceedingly well!
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