9 Ways to Decorate Fun Halloween Cupcakes

Directions

1. Use both regular and mini cupcakes. Apply chocolate frosting to half and orange frosting (tinted from vanilla with gel-paste food coloring if needed) to the other half. Top each with orange and brown mini M&Ms for a polka-dot pattern.
2. Begin with two candy-coated chocolate pieces as eyes. Add a dot of frosting and mini chocolate chips to each eye, then pipe green icing in a crisscross pattern over the cupcake.
3. Create pumpkin-shaped cupcakes using orange frosting, fine and coarse orange decorating sugar, and pretzel sticks or rods. Frost cupcakes with a mound of orange frosting, then roll the entire cupcake or just the edge in alternating fine and coarse sugars. Press a wooden skewer into the top to create indentations. Insert a pretzel piece as the stem. Use mini, regular, and jumbo pans for pumpkins of different sizes.
4. Shape white fondant into ghost figures. Fondant can be found at craft stores or specialty cake shops if not available at grocery stores.
5. Make an owl cupcake by stacking a thin candy wafer, then a round candy, then a mini candy-coated chocolate for each eye, securing with frosting. Cut red fruit leather into strips for feathery eyebrows. Add black string licorice for ears, a candy corn for the nose, layered almond slices for ruffles, and pecan halves for feet.
6. Frost a sugar cone with green icing to form the top of a witch's hat, then attach it to a chocolate cookie using melted chocolate. Place this hat on a cupcake frosted with white frosting. Add two mini candy-coated chocolates for eyes and dyed coconut for hair.
7. For a goblin face, cut sour straws in half and insert into frosting as hair. Place sour gummy rings as eyes, adding a white jelly bean in each ring's center and a mini chocolate chip on top. Position a green jelly bean beside the eyes for the nose.
8. Use a halved chocolate wafer cookie to form bat wings, outlining them with green icing. Place a candy-coated chocolate piece as the bat's head. Add green icing dots for eyes and decorate with sprinkles.
9. Begin with an oval chocolate cookie as the owl's body. Attach two fruit-flavor candy circles with a dot of frosting in the center for eyes. Use a cashew for the nose and two pieces of shaved coconut for eyebrows. Insert pretzel rods as wings.