Halloween Carnival Cupcakes

 These were for Ethan's Halloween carnival.  His class was in charge of the cupcake walk.  I know perfect, right? I had Ethan help me look for ideas and boy did he have an opinion.  He didn't want anything too babyish.  He is so 9 years old! This is what we came up with.

 I added these to the mix but he approved.  I used white chocolate to make the web and black to make the spider. I used Tip 2 to pipe the web design and once it dried I peeled it carefully off the wax paper and added it to the top of the frosting.

 Green alien:I used fondant to make these. I used Americolor Electric Green for the color.  I cut strips for the legs, shaped the end and draped them over my fondant rolling pin to let dry over night.  I colored some fondant yellow for the eyes.  I used the opening of my big frosting tip to make the circle, then added the black diamond shape with a little water.

 While I was making the chocolate spider webs I made some ghosts too.  Since I was making 48 cupcakes I needed to add some simple ones to the mix.  I used some black sprinkles for the ghosts eyes. I used Milano cookies for the tombs. Ethan said these were for the girls because they were too cute.

 These were Ethan's favorite. I first saw the idea on Facebook.  They were super fun to make and a perfect 9 year old cupcake. Here's the link to make the sugar glass and the blood.   A couple notes:make sure you have your heat on medium when making the glass.  I cooked mine too fast and it turned a little yellow, but it is a long process so if you think mine looks okay then turn up the heat.  Also I didn't add any water to the blood after reading the reviews and I only added 1 drop of blue coloring and a ton more red gel color.  Looking back at the pics I could probably have added a little bit of water to make it more drippy.  I also read afterwards to add almond extract to the glass.  I will try that too next time but the kids still loved to eat the glass the way it was.

 I thought it would be fun to make red velvet cake to add to the gruesomeness of this little cake.

 Zombie cupcakes: Ethan and I both loved this idea when we first found these.  Unfortunately they used cute plastic zombie picks which I didn't have time to order.  I tried making mine out of fondant.  I rolled the green (Americolor electric green) fondant out and then cut a arm and hand shape out.  I wrapped the arm part around a small sucker stick and shaped the fingers into a more zombie like shape. They weren't as good as the picture but Ethan was still happy especially after adding the blood (painted on red gel color.)

 Be careful when adding the tombstones (Milano cookies.) If you put them in too far they will make your cupcakes fall apart.  I had to redo several. Use a knife and cut a slit where you want the cookie to go and that will help the cake not split to bad when adding it.

R.I.P. zombie friends.

So at first I was sad that I had a kid too old to love the cutesy Halloween cupcakes but I ended up enjoying these gruesome little things.

Happy Halloween goblins and zombies!