Halloween Spiderweb Cupcakes

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! 

Halloween Cupcakes

There were a few pre-Halloween occasions that called for a treat so I made a few different Halloween inspired cupcakes, but my favorites were these friendly ghosts.

For my daughter's Montessori Fall Festival cakewalk I did a simple vanilla cupcake with vanilla buttercream and a sprinkling of candy corns.  I even bought some special window top cupcake boxes this year so people at the cakewalk could easily view the treats inside. 

My friend hosted her annual Halloween party in her amazing barn and asked me to bring some cupcakes.  I made several fondant ghosts to top the remaining vanilla cupcakes.  It was too much work to make 20+ ghosts, so I colored the rest of the buttercream orange and decorated them with brown sprinkles and candy corn.

To make the fondant ghosts, I started out by cutting giant marshmallows in a cone shape and made sure it was a little rounded on top.  By cutting the marshmallow, I was able to get it the shape I wanted and it also made the marshmallow nice and sticky for the fondant to adhere.  I referenced my marzipan book and it had a guide for ghosts using a cone shaped and round piece of marzipan under the circle, but you needed to hold them together with a toothpick and I didn't want to have a sharp toothpick in the cupcakes that little kids would be eating.  So, I tried out the marshmallow idea. What kid doesn't like marshmallows!?

Next I rolled out my white chocolate fondant and cut out large circles that were draped on top of the marshmallow and then crimped a little at the bottom.

When I was in England recently, I bought a package of caramel and chocolate decorating tubes and used the milk chocolate one to make the eyes and mouth.  This was much better to use than the gel decorating tubes as they are quite gooey.  The chocolate was easy to put on and hardened nicely.  Plus, the chocolate color matched the dark brown cupcake papers I baked them in.

Our neighborhood has our Halloween party this coming weekend and my family is visiting, so I'm sure I'll be inspired to create some other fun fall goodies.