Halloweeeeeeen

Why get creative with costumes when you can get creative with cupcakes? :) Okay, I wasn't terribly creative as I took this idea from the Hello, Cupcake! book... but it was fun nonetheless.

I used the recipe for chocolate cupcakes from scratch in the same book, and I must say, they were not a winner. The texture was light, but it tasted nothing like chocolate. My husband likened it to sweetened wheat bread, which is pretty accurate. I used Ghirardhelli chocolate and cocoa powder and followed the recipe exactly. Perhaps another type of chocolate would make a difference, but in the future when I do spend more time decorating, I would probably just use box cupcakes.

The creepy crawlers were pretty simple to make but required an assortment of different candies. We bought every size of M&Ms we could find, and we bought much more than we actually needed. If you are going to try this project, definitely invest in the smaller bags, or you will be left with uneaten bags and bags of M&Ms (oh the horror!). As for the melting chocolate, we used the stuff you can find in the produce section... I can't recall the name brand, but it is used for making chocolate-covered fruits. It doesn't take long to melt in the microwave and is pretty easy to work with.

While making them was not difficult, it was the transferring to the cupcakes that did us in. We created all the crawlers on wax paper and let them set in the fridge for at least 5 minutes. When we tried to remove them, breakage was rampant. The trouble? We used less chocolate than recommended thinking it was more than enough... but those M&Ms are weighty and require support. So for future reference, use as much chocolate as recommended. Do not skimp on that part!

We also used a mix of orange, purple, and green sprinkles to decorate some... it looked quite Halloween-y if you ask me! And finally, I did a couple of web designs which looked pretty cute. I just made concentric chocolate circles and used a toothpick to create the design, pulling from the center of the cupcake straight down to the edges.

HAPPY HALLOWEEN!