Pumpkin Week III: Spider Pumpkin Cupcakes

Happy Halloween!  I was super pleased with the way these turned out.  Very creepy over-sized and a bit disproportioned spiders on top of purple spiderweb pumpkin cupcakes!  I love them.  They looked so great all together on the platter when I brought them to school this morning.  No picture of that unfortunately.  This picture I like because it looks like an army of chocolate spiders.  Yummy.

The cupcakes are pumpkin and use a cake mix…gotta love that.  The flavor was good and the cake was moist.  The tops of the cupcakes were easy to frost, not too rounded and not too flat.

Here is the recipe:

  • 1 package yellow cake mix
  • 1 cup solid pack pumpkin
  • 3/4 cup water
  • 2 tablespoons oil
  • 3 eggs
  • 1 teaspoon cinnamon
  • 1 teaspoon pumpkin pie spice
Preparation:
  1. Preheat oven to 350°F. Line 24 standard (2-1/2-inch) muffin pan cups with paper liners or spray with nonstick cooking spray.
  2. Beat cake mix, pumpkin, water, eggs, oil, cinnamon and pumpkin pie spice in large bowl with electric mixer at medium speed 3 minutes or until well blended.
  3. Spoon batter into each muffin cup. Bake about 20 minutes or until toothpicks inserted into centers come out clean. Cool in pans 10 minutes. Remove cupcakes to wire racks; cool completely.

I frosted the cupcakes with cream cheese icing which I’d colored purple.

To make the spiderwebs:

1.  Melt semi-sweet chocolate chips and transfer the chocolate to a piping bag.

2.  Pipe a spiral of chocolate from the center of the cupcake out to the edge.

3.  Use a toothpick to drag a few evenly spaced lines from the center to the edge of the cupcake.  Tada!

I found a recipe that used black gumdrops to make the spiders, but I wasn’t too thrilled with that idea.  I decided to use whoppers as the spider body and then make little legs from molding chocolate, like almond bark.

To make the spider legs:

1.  Melt the chocolate according to the package directions.

2.  Transfer to a piping bag or plastic bag with a SMALL corner cut off.

3.  Pipe legs onto parchment paper and let dry.

Tip:  Make more legs than you need as they will break easily.

To assemble the cupcakes:

1.  Place one whopper on the top of the cupcake.

2.  Arrange 8 legs, 4 on each side of the whopper pressing slightly into the icing.