We were having a few friends over for Halloween night to have dinner prior to going out trick or treating so I wanted to make a fun dessert. It's not that you need MORE sweets on Halloween, but I have been wanting to try piping chocolate decorations and thought I'd give this a try for the occasion.
I made a different chocolate cupcake recipe that I found by Ina Garten as I wanted to do a glossy ganache on top. It was definitely a different cake recipe that called for no leavening or cocoa but Hershey's chocolate syrup instead? I was skeptical but gave it a try. They baked nicely and they were definitely more dense, but it was perfect to hold the ganache frosting and it didn't soak through after we dipped the tops in the glossy chocolate and heavy cream mixture.
It was SO fun piping the white chocolate! I melted down Ghiradelli chocolate disks and put it in a quart size bag with the corner snipped off to make a piping bag. It worked well, but you need to work quickly before the white chocolate starts to solidify in the bag.
I used a template for the spiderwebs that I found online and piped along the lines on wax paper. I placed the cobwebs in the freezer to harden and continued with piping. I bought a bag of plastic spiders and decorated each one with a spider.
I even had a little extra white chocolate so I tried my hand at piping a short "Boo!" on a few.
They were a hit for dinner and enjoyed after a long walk around Georgetown for trick or treating. Happy Halloween!
Meringues
