Easy Cupcakes

These Dracula cupcakes feature Tic Tacs for fangs! Use black icing in a tube so you don’t have to worry about tinting. Happy Halloween!

What You Need: 1 cupcake; frosting tinted green; 2 red hots; red writing icing; black tubed icing and star tip; 2 Tic Tacs.

How to Make It: Frost cupcake green. Using black tubed icing, pipe pointy-topped stars (don’t stop squeezing as you pull away) with a row in the back, then three stars, then one, to form a widow’s peak. Add red hot eyes. Pipe red smile. Add Tic Tac teeth.

The vampire bitten cupcake is not my original idea, but I wanted to try my hand at this easy-to-make Halloween cupcake that would also be appropriate for a Twilight party or other vampire-themed event. The vampire pierced it with its sharp teeth, and blood is oozing out! Appetizing.

What You Need: 1 cupcake; white frosting; toothpick; red gel writing icing.

How to Make It: Frost cupcake. Use toothpicks to poke two holes about half the size of a pencil eraser, approximately 3/4″ apart. Squeeze some red gel icing into and oozing out of the holes for gory blood.

Looky, Wookiees, it’s Chewy cupcakes. OK, enough with the bad jokes. I made more than three dozen of these Chewbacca cupcakes for my Star Wars fan son to take to his kindergarten class — enough to span 12 parsecs. If you want to make these Chewbacca cupcakes more quickly, just skip the “furry” part and frost them in a smooth layer of chocolate. This is a variation of a Chewbacca cupcake I saw online.

What You Need: 1 cupcake; chocolate frosting; pastry bag and #233 metal tip; white or off-white frosting; pastry bag and small, round metal tip (#2 is good); 2 white M&Ms; 2 black M&Ms; black writing icing in a tube (or, use a black food-safe marker.)

How to Make It: Frost cupcake with a thin layer of chocolate frosting. Put chocolate icing in pastry bag affixed with #233 metal tip. Use tip to make long strands that overlap for a furry effect. Squeeze a dot of black writing icing onto white M&Ms for eyes and place on cupcake. Add black M&M nose. Use white icing and round tip to “draw” a mouth and/or teeth.

Use a pastry bag to make cute little ghosts that perch atop your Halloween cupcakes!

What You Need: 1 cupcake; green frosting; Halloween sprinkles; 2 brown mini M&Ms, white frosting; pastry bag; round metal tip (I used #5).

How to Make It: Frost cupcake green. Use pastry bag to pipe ghost in a swirly motion. Add M&M eyes. Add sprinkles.

You don’t have to be a zombie to have a taste for brains on Halloween. Or at least brain cupcakes. I’ve seen variations on this creepy cupcake idea in which the “brains” are mini marshmallows and the blood is icing rather than gel. Yum!

What You Need: 1 cupcake; chocolate frosting; white frosting; red gel writing icing; pastry bag and round metal tip (I used #5).

How to Make It: Frost cupcake with chocolate icing. Using pastry bag fitted with #5 tip, make two groups of circles (remember to stop squeezing the icing bag before you pull up or you’ll get little peaks). For each hemisphere of the brain, I made an inside row of four circles and an outside row of three. Then, drizzle red gel for oozing blood. Happy Halloween!

These Frankenstein cupcakes (or, for you literary sticklers, Frankenstein’s monter) are more sweet than spooky. You can use thick or thin stick pretzels for the “bolts.”

What You Need: 1 cupcake; frosting tinted green; 1 piece of candy corn; 1 mini marshmallow; 1 stick pretzel; purple writing icing; green food-safe marker; scissors or knife.

How to Make It: Frost cupcake. Use purple writing icing to scribble hair at top of cupcake. Break pretzel in half and stick one end on each side of head for bolts. Cut marshmallow in half and use food-safe market to draw eyeball on each. Place eyes and candy corn nose on Frankenstein’s face.