This Halloween I went a little crazy…
The combination of a surprise day off from work (trees knocked out the electricity at my school) and the excitement of my first trick-or-treating in 12 years, inspired me to spend the day baking up tons of creepy treats.
Most of the time, I prefer to bake cupcakes from scratch – but sometimes it is necessary to swap homemade quality for spooky quantity. I decided to pull out all of the stops with a bounty of candy and boxed cake goodness.
All In A Day’s Work
Eyeball Cupcakes
Ingredients:
Red Velvet Cake Mix (with extra red food coloring)
8 oz. cream cheese (no need to soften)
5 tbsp. unsalted butter, softened
2 tsp. vanilla 2 ½ cups powdered sugar, sifted
Wilton Red Gel
Gummy Savers, assorted colors
Chocolate Chips
Directions:
Add extra red coloring to the mix to make them extra spooky. Bake according to directions and transfer to a wire rack and cool completely.
To make the frosting, whip the cream cheese, butter and vanilla until thick and creamy. Add the powdered sugar to the bowl a little at a time (on low to prevent spilling) until combined. Turn the speed to high until it reaches desired consistency.
Frost the cupcakes with tons of frosting (you know cream cheese frosting is the best). Put one Gummy Life Saver upside down in the center. Using a bit of frosting to attach, place a chocolate chip in the center of the Saver, point down. Pipe several, squiggly blood-shot lines from the saver to the edge.
Try a bite – don’t be too creeped out by the “blood” inside
Adapted from Annie’s Eats
(Not-so) Wicked Witch Cupcakes
They are little too cute to be spooky, but I like them!
Ingredients:
Chocolate cake mix (I used Devil’s food)
24 brown mini M&Ms plus
Canned frosting (vegan), tinted dirty green using red and green food coloring
12 sugar cones
chocolate chips
Chocolate laces (or if you can’t find them, like me – chocolate twizzlers…) cut into pieces for eyebrows, bangs, and hair
12 candy corns
Directions:
Bake cupcakes according to directions and place on rack and let them cool completely before decorating.
Put chocolate chips in microwaveable container, heat for 30 seconds, and stir. Put back in the microwave for 30 more seconds and then stir again until fully melted. Roll cone in chocolate and use spoon to coat completely. Place on wax lined cookie sheet. Repeat with all cones, melting more chocolate as necessary. Place tray of cones in fridge to set.
These are out of this world
Cover the tops of each cupcake a heaping mound of the eerie green frosting. Insert one candy corn into each cupcake to form a nose. Make two eyes using brown mini M&Ms. Place two short lengths of licorice above the eyes to form eyebrows. Add bangs and hair before balancing the cone hat on top. This part is pretty precarious. I eventually gave up on the hair and made some “warlocks” or bald witches.
Some of the witches had a hard time keeping their hats on so they ended up looking kind of sleepy. Pretty cute though, if I don’t say so myself.
Adapted from Martha Stewart
Simple Stenciled Cakes
These are from Martha Stewart’s repertoire. I went to AC Moore to pick up some Halloween cupcake liners. All of their Halloween goodies were on sale half off, so when I saw these cupcake/cookie stencils, I had to have them.
Using some of the extra cupcakes from the witches and eyeballs, I stenciled some cupcakes with powdered sugar. These are good for those people that are less than fond of frosting (me)!
Ghost Graveyard Cupcakes
To make this ghastly graveyard, I used the rest of the chocolate and red velvet cupcakes. I frosted the red velvets with extra cream cheese frosting and the chocolate cupcakes with canned chocolate frosting.
I then stuck a Peeps ghost on top and coated the cake with chocolate sprinkles (to mimic dirt). These fast cupcakes are super cute, and if you like peeps, delicious!
vegetarian epicurean 
Oh kill me now, these are so cute! Halloween 2012 is too far away.