Feast Week, Day 7: Prisoners of a Barrow-wight

“When he [Frodo Baggins] came to himself again, for a moment he could recall nothing except a sense of total dread. Then suddenly he knew that he was imprisoned, caught hopelessly; he was in a barrow. A Barrow-wight had taken him, and he was probably already under the dreadful spells of the Barrow-wights about which whispered tales spoke.” – The Fellowship of the Ring, Chapter 8: Fog on the Barrow-downs

There’s not a lot of detail when it comes to Barrow-wights, and what exists implies they resembled Ringwraiths. Garbed in black cloth, Barrow-wights were malicious souls that occupied fleshless, bony skeletons. With that sort of description, one can get a sense of how uncomfortable and scary it must have been for Frodo and his friends on their seventh night away from The Shire.

Thankfully, we can celebrate this day during Feast Week with a bit lighter of a tone, and what better way than to pile on the chocolate and sugary goodness?

For this year’s Day 7 I chose a quick and easy recipe that’s fun to make and tasty too: Barrow-wight Cupcakes!

The actual cupcake making process is easy, simply buy a box of chocolate cake mix and follow the directions on the back. The icing however, is a bit more tricky, as everyone knows, homemade icing is the best! Luckily for you all, I love you enough to share my secret recipe. See below for instructions and photos:

Arwen’s TOP SECRET Icing Recipe

Icing Ingredients:

• 2 sticks of butter, room temperature
• 1  1/2 tsp of vanilla
• 3 cups of powdered sugar
• 2 TBL whipping cream
• 1 small jar of black icing color (omit this if you wish to use this recipe at a later date)
• 1 bag of skeleton head rings (I found mine at my local dollar store)

Directions:

• Whip butter with mixer until it’s light and creamy
• Add in vanilla and whip some more
• Add powdered sugar and slowly stir it
• Once powdered sugar has begun mixing with butter, pour in whipping cream
• Stir ingredients slowly until everything is nicely combined (you might need to stir it manually a few times to make sure all the powdered sugar is gathered from the sides of the bowl)
• Turn mixer on high and run for 3 minutes until icing is whipped so it’s light and fluffy
• Slowly add in black icing dye until the desired color is reached
• Once cupcakes are cool, apply icing to the tops
• Push skeleton head rings into the side of the icing
• Share with your fellow Tolkien fans and enjoy!
• Don’t forget to send me photos if you try your hand at this recipe, I’d love to see them – Happy Feast Week, everyone!