Halloween: Spider Cupcakes

Today I baked one of my favorite Halloween treats: Spider Cupcakes. Yes these are so cute, they can even put a smile on my face when I have a sore throat like today. They are quit easy to make. All you have to have is black liquorice, chocolate sprinkles and red mini m&m's. You can use any cupcake-flavor you want but it looks especially nice when you make red velvet cupcakes (didn't have any red food coloring left, so I made vanilla cupcakes). I love my little araignées (French for spiders).

Vanilla Cupcakes recipe: adapted from Martha Stewart's Snickerdoodle Cupcakes recipe

Ingredients: makes 28 cupcakes (I only used half of this recipe)
- 1 ½ cups all-purpose flour
- 1 ½ cups cake flour (not self-rising), sifted
- 1 tablespoon baking powder
- ½ teaspoon salt
- 1 cup unsalted butter, room temperature
- 1 ¾ cups sugar
- 4 large eggs, room temperature
- 2 teaspoons pure vanilla extract
- 1 cups milk

Instructions:
- Preheat oven to 350 degrees. Line standard muffin tins with paper liners. Sift together both flours, baking powder and salt.
- With an electric mixer on medium-high speed, cream butter and sugar until pale and fluffy. Add eggs, one at a time, beating until each is incorporated, scraping down sides of bowl as needed. Beat in vanilla. Reduce speed to low. Add flour mixture in three batches, alternating with two additions of milk, and beating until combined after each.
- Divide batter evenly among lined cups, filling each three-quarters full. Bake, rotating tins halfway through, until a cake tester inserted in centers comes out clean, about 20 minutes. Transfer tins to wire racks to cool completely before removing cupcakes.

Chocolate Frosting recipe: My own

Ingredients:
- 1 cup confectioners' sugar
- 3 tablespoons unsalted butter, softened
- 1 tablespoon cocoa
- 1 teaspoon vanilla extract
- 2 tablespoons milk

Instructions:
- In a medium-sized bowl, sift together the confectioners's sugar and cocoa.
- Add butter, vanilla and milk and mix with an electric mixer to combine. Use more milk if needed.


9 wonderful vanilla cupcakes.

Black liquorice. You unmold these completely and use them for the spiders legs/arms/what are they?

Icing them is very easy and fast. You just put half a tablespoon on top of a cupcake and use the back of a teaspoon to frost the cupcake evenly, using a swirling motion. Then add the red eyes, and finally dip the cupcake into chocolate sprinkles.

I used a cake tester to make three incisions on each side and then stuffed it with the liquorice strings.

"Eat us or we eat you!"