Or maybe we should say easier. Decorating for Halloween shouldn’t take over your life and we believe the kids should help, too! These decorating ideas are all from Better Homes and Gardens so we feel confident we could probably make them, too, and we have limited creative skills. Just kidding.
Red Velvet Eyeballs
The eyes have it with these deliciously haunting cupcakes. They may be spooky to look at but we’re sure they can be Halloween “focal” points.
To make the cupcakes, follow these steps:
1. Make red velvet cake mix in fluted individual tube pans.
2. Once cooled, pipe with white icing in a zigzag pattern around eyeball candies.
Witch Leg Cupcakes
This coconut-topped Halloween cupcake may look more than a little wicked, but with the witch stuck in the batter and no cauldron in sight, we promise this treat will only taste sweet.
To make the cupcake, follow these steps:
1. Use black marzipan to shape the witch’s boots.
2. Stick yellow mini candy-coated chocolates on each boot for the buckles using frosting to secure.
3. Mold each boot around a peppermint stick to create the legs.
4. Top the cupcake with coconut dyed using green food coloring.
5. Insert peppermint sticks into the cupcake.
Cupcake Ghosts
Supernatural forces can’t chain these ethereal spooks to your Halloween table. They’ll vanish as soon as your guests glimpse their billowing forms and taste the white chocolate cupcakes hidden beneath the fondant phantom.
- Generously pipe frosting on a 2-1/2-inch cupcake. Remove paper bake cup from a 1-3/4-inch cupcake and place the small cupcake, upside down, on top of the large cupcake. Generously pipe frosting on top of small cupcake. Top with a doughnut hole. Use frosting to secure any unstable parts of the stack.
- On parchment paper, roll a 1-1/2-inch-diameter ball of fondant into a 6-inch-diameter circle. Drape fondant circle loosely over the cupcake stack, pressing or creasing fondant to make the stack look more ghostly.
- Use frosting to attach sunflower kernels to the fondant for eyes and mouth or use black icing to pipe eyes and mouth.
Haunted Graveyard Cupcakes
- Split chocolate a sandwich cookie in half. Remove and discard filling. Using a serrated knife, cut a cookie half to make a tombstone shape. Crush remaining cookie and trimmings. Pipe a message in white frosting on flat side of tombstone.
- Place melted chocolate candy coating in a heavy resealable plastic bag; snip off a small corner. Pipe a leafless tree, 3 to 4 inches tall (make it thick so it won’t break when hardened) onto a baking sheet lined with waxed paper. Chill until chocolate hardens.
- Frost a cupcake with white frosting. Insert a cookie tombstone. Use a toothpick to make a small hole in cupcake top. Carefully peel chocolate tree from waxed paper and insert into hole; use frosting to secure tree. If desired, add a candy pumpkin.
- Place green-tinted frosting in a heavy resealable plastic bag; snip off a small corner. Using quick upward motions, pipe grass accents around tombstone, tree, and pumpkin. Sprinkle cupcake with crushed cookies.