Halloween Cupcakes

With Halloween right around the corner, I couldn’t resist making a cupcake to celebrate the season! These are chocolate Halloween cupcakes, with my butter cream cheese frosting. They are decorated with “spider” theme in mind. Not sure how my grand babies will feel about these creepy and “crawly” cupcakes, but will soon find out as I’m bringing them to Sunday night dinner tonight!

They start with my favorite chocolate cupcake recipe. Super moist cake, with nice rounded tops.

One recipe will make about 15 – 16 regular size cupcakes. (Feel free to double this for more!) Prepare muffin pan with paper liners. Bake at 350 degrees for 16 – 18 min.

Ingredients:

3 oz. bittersweet or semi-sweet chocolate, chopped.
1/3 c Dutch processed cocoa powder
1 c hot coffee

Combine chocolate, cocoa powder, and coffee in a small bowl, and let sit for about 5 min – to melt the chocolate. Then stir gently using a whisk, til blended and smooth. Set aside to cool.

In the bowl of a stand mixer with a whisk attachment, add:

2 large eggs
1/3 c vegetable oil
2 tsp white vinegar
1 tsp vanilla extract

Mix til blended. SLOWLY pour chocolate mixture into mixing bowl, while mixer set on LOW speed.

Combine dry ingredients into a separate bowl, and sift together, or blend using a whisk.

1 c all purpose flour
1 c sugar
1 tsp salt
1 tsp baking soda

Add dry ingredients SLOWLY into mixing bowl with wet ingredients. Keep mixer on LOW speed until all dry ingredients added, then increase speed to med. Blend until very smooth.

Using a large ice cream scoop – add batter to each cup til 3/4 filled. (I usually use 1 1/3 scoop for each cup).

Bake at 350 for 16 – 18 min., until tops are rounded, and no longer “wet” looking. Test for doneness using a toothpick – should come out clean when inserted into the center.

Let these cool completely.

Frost as desired – I used my butter cream cheese frosting (see prior post). I made 1 batch of orange colored frosting, and piped frosting onto 1/2 of the cupcakes. Then I made another 1/2 batch, and split the frosting in half and colored the bowls green, and purple. There was some orange frosting left over, so I decorated the rest of the cupcakes with this mixture of 3 colors in 1 piping bag. Then add plastic spiders, or other halloween-themed decorations.

To make spider webs, melt some chocolate candy melts. Pipe 3 circles around a center drop of chocolate. Then drag a toothpick through the rings, to create a web effect. Let dry completely. Place spider web onto the frosting, then add a spider, or other halloween decoration.

My second cupcake has a swirl of orange, green and purple frosting, with a garnish of dark chocolate sprinkles around the base, then topped with a “spider”.