Easy Halloween Cupcakes

Halloween is almost here!

Are you ready?  No? 

Well I am here to help!

This post is for all you procrastinators out there.  And I say  this with the utmost love and respect. For I am a champion, card carrying, flag waving procrastinator.  I even joined a support group, but it hasn't been much help:

I feel your pain. You had all these great delusions of grandeur of all the amazing treats you were going to make for Halloween. Maybe a haunted gingerbread house. Or a topsy turvy Tim Burton style. Or a batch of fabulously  custom decorated cookies. You had it all planned in your head. You laid awake at night with excitement thinking of the joy you were going to experience while creating  your  incredible Halloween confections.

And here we are, just a few days before Halloween and...... nothing..... nada...... crickets. Where did the time go?  What will we do? The kids are looking up at you with those sad longing eyes, asking what you will be making for their class or neighborhood party. Crikey! Why did we wait so long? Your heart starts to race; sweat forms on your brow; the room is going white. Pure unadulterated panic.

Raise  your hand if you are with me so far. I have been in this situation more times than I count.  

Well, have no fear. Queen Procrastinator is here to help you. 

Oops wrong queen. I will fix that. Later.

So let me share with you these super duper easy Halloween cupcakes that you can whip out in no time, but still impress even the most discerning goblins and ghouls.

Ghosts and skeletons and graveyards, oh my!

Let's start with the standing skeleton:

You will need white chocolate covered pretzels, sucker sticks, and marshmallows.

Draw a face on the flat side of a marshmallow that has been cut in half with an edible food marker. Three of the pretzels need to be glued to the sucker stick with some melted chocolate to make the rib cage.

And that was the tricky part. I spent a good 20 minutes trying to get those finicky pretzels to line up correctly on the sucker stick without flopping over or getting out of alignment. I found the above method worked the best. I used gravity to hold the back edges of the pretzels onto the stick while the chocolate hardened.  Worked great and was very easy.

You use another pretzel cut as shown above to make the arms. You use the piece on the left, and eat the piece on the right. It's a win/win  for everybody.

After you pipe your icing swirl, just stick the sucker stuck in and lay the arm bones into the holes of the upper rib cage pretzel. Done. Fast. Easy. Cute. ( I must give credit to Woman's Day for  this idea. I saw it online and copied it.)

 Now to the spooky graveyards:

I found these adorable sugar skulls at Wal Mart In the Wilton isle.

They appear to me to be gumpaste, and they were a very nice shape with good details.

To kick them up a notch, bring out a couple of brown petal dusts and  give them a roughing up.

That took all of about 30 seconds, and they look awesome!

To make the tombstone, just cut a rectangular piece of fondant (with tylose added) and impress the RIP with your favorite alphabet cutters.   The cute cupcake wrappers were also made by Wilton.

Once the tombstones dry, hit them with a little luster dust. Pipe a swirl onto your cupcake, and slap a tombstone and skull on top. Done. How easy was that?

Crazy easy ghosts:

A Dum Dum lollipop.

 Drape a circle of white fondant over it.

Add two  eyes made from either fondant or your edible ink pen. Stick into cupcake icing. Woooooooo.

And you are done!

Group shot!

Cuteness overload.

Tread only if you dare!

He is a happy little fellow.

I don't know what came over me. I lost my head.

And you saved the day! You have created this wonderful spread of amazing cupcakes,  and it was fast and easy. You can take convenient pre-made products, do a little doctoring, and turn them into a custom made and impressive result:

HAPPY HALLOWEEN EVERYBODY!

Sharon
www.sugaredproductions.com