Easy Cupcakes

These vampire cupcakes are an easy way to put some “bite” in your Halloween festivities. (sorry!!)

What You Need: 1 cupcake; icing tinted green; black string licorice; white icing in pastry bag or tube with round tip; purple writing icing; 2 brown mini M&Ms.

How to Make It: Frost cupcake. Add M&M eyes and curve length of licorice of mouth. Use pastry bag or tube to pipe triangle-shaped teeth. With purple writing icing, draw hairline shape for widow’s peak like Dracula.

Make this pretty pumpkin cupcakes for Halloween or any fall festivity using only fruit gel candies and green writing icing.

What You Need: 1 cupcake; white or off-white frosting; 1 orange gel candy; green gel or writing icing in tube.

How to Make It: Frost cupcake. Place orange gel candy on it. Use writing icing to draw pumpkin stem and vine. That’s it!

For Halloween or Day of the Dead celebrations, use white icing and mini marshmallows to create this simple skeletons. Vary their arm and leg positions so they can dance!

What You Need: 1 cupcake; chocolate frosting; white frosting; pastry bag, coupler and small metal tip such as #2 (or, just use tubed icing); edible food markers.

How to Make It: Frost cupcake with chocolate. Let set for a few minutes. Use pastry bag to pipe skeleton legs, arms, body and ribs. Use black food marker to make eyes on a mini marshmallow. Place on top of skeleton body.

This big-eyed owl cupcakes are a hoot (sorry!) on Halloween or anytime.

What You Need: 1 cupcake; chocolate frosting; 2 white fruit gels; 2 brown or black M&Ms; 1 banana candy (such as Runts).

How to Make It: Frost cupcake. Arrange gels side-by-side. Use dab of icing to attach one M&M to each gel. Stick banana nose in center.

Candy corn really does look like teeth, especially the “autumn” kind with the brown ends.

What You Need: 1 cupcake; white or off-white frosting; black gel or writing icing in tube; 5 candy corns (brown end or regular); 2 black or brown M&Ms.

How to Make It: Frost cupcake. Use black writing icing to draw a skull shape (fat top and thinner bottom) on cupcake. Add 2 black M&Ms for eyes. Break fat ends off of candy corns and arrange on cupcake with three “teeth” on top and two on bottom for mouth.

I had more fun experimenting with the Betty Crocker aerosol cupcake frosting and ended up with a creepy mummy. The trick is learning to control the flow of the frosting, and I can’t really say I’ve mastered it yet.

What You Need: 1 cupcake; white frosting; white aerosol icing (or you could use a pastry bag with a ribbon tip); 2 black or brown M&Ms. (Black M&Ms are sold at Halloween and in specialty candy stores, but brown or blue or red is just fine.)

How to Make It: Frost cupcake with regular white frosting. Place 2 M&Ms for eyes. “Draw” white icing ribbons (mummy wrappers), overlapping, several times until cupcake is covered except for the eyes.

I went crazy with a can of Betty Crocker Decorating Cupcake Icing to make these cupcakes, but you can use a pastry bag with a 1M swirl tip, or just pile on a dollop of white icing.

What You Need: 1 cupcake; Better Crocker Decorating Cupcake Icing (or Easy Flow icing or other substitute) in Cloud White; 2 black jellybeans.

How to Make It: Attach star tip and test the flow of icing before applying to cupcake. Then, starting from the outside edge of the cupcake, “draw” circles of icing, moving inward and up at an even pace until you have a ghostly mound of icing. Stick 2 black jellybeans into icing for eyes.