Pumpkin and Spice

As I mentioned, last week was my last week of school. (Yay!) If I may brag a little (and it's my blog, so I will), I finished with a 4.0, to boot!

Anyway, what that means is that I have evenings free for the next couple weeks. After a year of night school, I hardly know what to do with the free time! Since I'm totally excited about Halloween coming up, I decided to decorate some spooky cupcakes.

I love decorating cakes, cookies and cupcakes all Halloween-y, and I had an idea for spider cupcakes that I wanted to try. They turned out great! So cuddly-cute looking. They're easy-peasy to put together, and everyone will oooh and ahhh at your mad-crazy cake decorating skills.

You'll Need-

• 12 cupcakes (from a mix if fine, I won't tell)
• About 4c white pipeable icing (simple buttercream or store bought)
• Purple and black gel food color (like Wilton's)
• 4 ropes of Twizzler's Pull-n-Peel Licorice (Black would be ideal, but I could only find red)
• 3 piping bags fitted with:
• Decorating tips- small round tip, largish round tip and a grass tip (grass tips have a flat tip with lots of little pinholes)
• Wooden skewer

Dye 3c of the icing your desired shade of purple. Set aside. Dye 1/2c black and put in the piping bag fitted with the small round tip. Put the remaining 1/2c white icing in the bag fitted with the larger round tip.

Cut the Twizzlers into 2" chunks and peel the strands apart.

With the skewer, poke 4 holes in a row on each cupcake.

Fit each hole with a piece of Twizzler, pushing them in fairly deep so they don't come out.

Frost each cupcake with a thin layer of purple icing. Smooth well. Place remaining purple icing in the piping bag fitted with the grass tip.

Starting at the "butt-end" of the spider and working forward, use the purple icing in the grass tip to pipe fur on the cupcake. To do this- place the tip flat on the cupcake and squeeze and lift, releasing pressure as you do. As you do the rows, lay the strands of fur over the previous row. Cover about 2/3 of the cupcake with fur, leaving a smooth patch of icing for the spider's face.

 With the white icing, pipe 2 pearls of icing for eyes. If you get peaks, pat them down with a slightly damp finger to make smooth balls.

With the black icing, pipe pupils and a smile on the spiders.

Share your spider cuties with all your friends!