Spiderweb Cupcakes

Gotta love Martha Stewart. I love reading her website for ideas and I saw her post a No-Bake Spiderweb Cheesecake. I thought the spiderweb design on top of the cake was great. I used her method to recreate the design on cupcakes.

Ingredients

Baked cupcakes (I used Pillbury's Devil Food Cake)
White Betty Crocker cookie icing
Betty Crocker Decorating Gel in black

After baking the cupcakes, I waited for them to cool down to start decorating.

Apply a thin layer of  the white Betty Crocker cookie icing onto the cupcakes. After covering the surface of the cupcake, wait for the icing to set, about 5 minutes. Now you can start making the web.

Starting in the center of the cupcake, pipe a spiral.

Pull the tip of a paring knife in a gently curved line from the center of the spiral to outer edge. Do not push the knife into the dried white icing. Move across the surface of the icing lightly, only moving the black gel icing down. Wipe knife clean, and repeat to form a web.

The above picture is your finished result. Enjoy! Happy Halloween!

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Jack Skellington Cupcakes

Besides carving a Nightmare Before Christmas pumpkin, I also decided to make some cupcakes, decorated to look like Jack Skellington's face. I got the inspiration for this on the Disney Family website and really loved the idea. The execution was pretty simple too.

Ingredients

Baked cupcakes (I used Pillbury's Devil Food cake mix)
White Betty Crocker cookie icing
Wilton Black Decorating Icing 
Wilton No. 3 round decorating tip
Wilton Coupler Ring (to attach the round decorating tip to the icing tube)

After baking the cupcakes, I waited for them to cool down to start decorating.

I used white Betty Crocker cookie icing for the face and Wilton Black Decorating Icing with the No. 3 decorating tip attached to make the face. I really liked using the Betty Crocker icing. Not a whole lot of prep was needed before opening the package and starting to put icing on the cupcakes. Apply a thin layer of this onto the cupcakes.

After covering the surface of the cupcake, wait for the icing to set. With this icing, it took 5 minutes. Now you can start decorating.

Use the black icing to draw the outline of the eyes. The Disney Family site recommends using toothpicks to draw the outline of the eyes before piping the black frosting. I didn't find this necessary, but it's a good suggestion.

Pipe on two short lines for a nose.

Pipe a long line across the bottom of the cupcake for the mouth.

Randomly top the mouth with a bunch of short icing barbs.

Pipe icing into the eyes to fill in the circles.

And you're done! Enjoy and have a happy Halloween!

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My Halloween Pumpkins

Besides dressing up every year, my favorite thing to do during the Halloween season is pumpkin carving. This year I carved three pumpkins.

This Nightmare Before Christmas themed pumpkin was the first one I carved this year. I absolutely love this movie and every year I do something themed with this film. I used two templates to come up with the end result.

My second pumpkin was a Dia de los muertos skull. It took me two days to do this. I got the pattern for it at Jammin' Pumpkins. I carved this pumpkin and the Jack and Sally pumpkin using a Pumpkin Masters carving kit.

My third pumpkin was Don Draper from Mad Men. I love this show, and I missed it this whole year. (Come back on the TV, Mad Men!) I had to make a pumpkin in honor of the sexiest man on TV.

For this one, I found a black and white stencil of Draper, transferred it over using the traditional poking method onto the pumpkin, and then I carved the skin off using a Speedball linoleum cutter. For this method, it's important to make the wall of the pumpkin thin on the inside so that the light shines through the pumpkin.

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