Halloween Cupcake Decorating

 Hello there! As Halloween is just around the corner, I thought I'd have a go at making some Halloween-esque cupcakes. These are great if you are having a party or a few friends over, or even if you just want to make something a bit festive! I also think that children would love to decorate these so you can get the whole family involved! 

 For the actual cupcakes I used my cupcake recipe which you can read here. The only change I made this time was that I didn't use any cocoa powder and so I used the full 150g of self-raising flour. Onto the decorating!

You will need:

- Icing sugar

- Food colouring, I personally went for orange, green and black.

-Writing icing

- Halloween sweets

 As I made twelve cupcakes, and I had three different food colourings, I decided to make four of each. I chose to do a pumpkin, monster and frankenstein design.



Process:

These are the sweets that I chose for my monster design. I wanted to use the fangs as teeth, and the strawberry laces for hair. Put these to one side for now.

 When I originally went to the supermarket, I was disappointed as I thought that these were only coloured writing icing. It was only once I got home that I realised that they were actually food colouring which was what I had wanted! These are great as there's no mess, as you just squeeze in as much colouring as you want.

 The great thing about glace icing is that if you find that you don't have enough, you can always make more. All you need to do is pour some icing sugar into a bowl, and mix in with a small amount of water. Make sure you stir it as much as you can and get out all of the lumps. If the mixture doesn't come together, just add a splash more water. Equally if it is too runny just add more icing sugar. When the consistency is right, add your food colouring. The first one that I went for was the green.

Once you are happy with the colour, you just need to spread this onto your cupcakes. After doing this I realised it would be better if I put the cakes on top of some kitchen roll which can catch any icing that drips down.

 I then left these to one side to allow the icing to harden, otherwise the writing icing would just fall off. I then repeated this process for the black and orange icing.

 

 

  Now onto the fun bit- the decorating! As well as using the sweets, I decided to use writing icing for my designs.

 For the pumpkin design I used the darkest writing icing that I had, and recreated the shapes that you might see in a carved pumpkin. A real carved pumpkin is great, but as I don't really know how to do them and it would be a lot of mess, I thought this would be easier. Although they're simple I think they're really eye catching and you can easily tell what they are supposed to be.

 For the Frankenstein design I used all four of the writing icing tubes to create a different face. Originally meant to be Frankenstein, they then became 'Frankenstein's relatives'. The great thing about decorating cupcakes is that they don't have to be perfect and you can have some fun with them.












 For the monster design I mainly used the sweets that I had bought. For the eyes I used the edible silver balls that you get to decorate cakes with, and I really like these. Again they are so simple, yet effective.

 I really enjoyed decorating these, and this is just to give you a few ideas- I'd love to see any other designs that you make! If you do recreate these or make any Halloween cupcakes, please tweet me @jesslouisekeen with a photo!

Which is your favourite?

Love Jess xxx