You wait around ages for a zombie-themed cupcake recipe book to be launched and two come along at once. Isn’t it always the way?

Both books represent the backlash against the cutesification (ok, we invented that word) of cupcakes. The first is by a former graphic designer and the second from a fine arts student turned baker.

First up is A Zombie Ate My Cupcake! by Lily Vanilli. The Hackney-based macabre baker, who last year shared her gory black cherry Dracula’s Bite cupcake recipe with BB’s readers, carries cupcakes across to the dark side, with Marzipan Beetles, Morbid Meringue Bones dipped in raspberry blood sauce and Fallen Angel Cakes.

"It’s a graphic horror novel/comic slash cookbook, illustrated by the immensely talented Paul Parker, full of delicious up to now secret recipes and instructions for Zombie cake design," she tells us.

Hot on its heels is Zombie Cupcakes: From the Grave to the Table with 16 Cupcake Corpses by American Zilly Rosen, with recipes from Zombie Flesh and Zombie Brain, to Gravestones and Night of the Living Cupcakes.

"Like everything else, the whole zombie thing is a culture of its own," Rosen is quoted as saying on buffalorising.com.

Lily’s book is due out 12 August and Zilly’s on 24 September.