Decorated Halloween Cupcakes

The funnest, easy to make and decorate Halloween Cupcakes! Made with a super simple, deliciously rich chocolate cupcake, a vanilla or orange flavored buttercream frosting, and decorated with cute Oreo bats, cats and jack-o-lanterns.

Ingredients

Cupcakes

1 1/3 cups (170g) all-purpose flour (spoon and level to measure)

1 cup (200g) granulated sugar

1/2 cup (42g) Dutch process cocoa powder (spoon and level to measure, sift after if clumpy)

1/2 tsp baking soda

1/2 tsp (scant) salt

1 cup buttermilk

1/3 cup vegetable oil

1 large egg

2 tsp vanilla extract

Frosting

2 3/4 cups (330g) powdered sugar

1/2 cup unsalted butter

2 to 3 Tbsp heavy cream

1/8 tsp salt

1 tsp vanilla extract, or zest of 2 oranges + 1/2 tsp orange extract

Orange food coloring (I use gel)

Halloween Decorations

Regular Oreos, * green M&M's, edible black marker, pretzel sticks, orange jimmy sprinkles or round sprinkles or use orange frosting

Instructions

For the chocolate cupcakes: Preheat oven to 350 degrees. Line a 12-cup muffin pan with cupcake liners then spray top of pan around liners with non-stick cooking spray. Set aside.

In a large mixing bowl whisk together flour, sugar, cocoa powder, baking soda, and salt until blended.

Pour in buttermilk, vegetable oil, egg and vanilla extract. Pop the egg yolk with a whisk then whisk mixture until well blended.

Divide mixture evenly among muffin cups filling each about 2/3 full.

Bake in preheated oven until cooked through, about 19 to 23 minutes. Let cool in pan for 5 minutes then transfer to a wire rack to cool completely.

Prepare decorations: For the cat ears split Oreos in half, remove filling and cut into larger rectangles, for bat wings cut some of the Oreo halves (removed filling) into half moons. Draw eyes on the green M&M's with edible marker (any design you'd like).

For the jack-o'-lantern faces cut Oreo cookies (with filling removed) into small rectangles for eyes and nose, save the rounded edge scrap pieces for the mouth of the pumpkin.

For the frosting: In a large mixing bowl using an electric hand mixer mix together powdered sugar, butter, 2 Tbsp heavy cream, butter, salt, vanilla extract or orange zest and extract. Mix until well combined while adding an additional 1 Tbsp cream near the end as needed to bring it together well.

Increase mixer speed to high and whip for about 4 minutes until it's light and fluffy, while tinting with orange food coloring to get desired intensity of color. Set aside 2 Tbsp of the frosting for the decorations in an airtight container.

Transfer frosting to a piping bag fitted with a star tip (I used Ateco 846 here) and pipe one single layer of frosting over cupcakes. Alternately you can just spread the orange frosting over the cupcakes. Reserve just a little frosting to use as the "glue" for eye and mouth decorations.

To decorate with Halloween decorations: For the cat place one Oreo on cupcake then tuck two larger cut Oreo triangles underneath at the top for the ears. Dab a little dot of frosting on the green M&M eyes to stick to the cookies, and a sprinkle for nose or pipe a nose with the orange frosting.

For the bat place one Oreo on cupcake and tuck two half moon wings on each side underneath (note these will only hold in place for a day and will begin to soften and break off after). Add eyes with a dot of frosting and a sprinkle mouth, or pipe a mouth with orange frosting.

To make the jack-o'-lantern faces top with two cut Oreo triangle eyes, a small triangle nose, and the small cut curved scraps of Oreos to make a zigzag mouth. Insert a broken piece of the pretzel stick at the top into the frosting for the stem, then place four green M&M's turned on their side for the leaf decoration.

Notes

Nutrition estimate based on 16 Oreos being added. Note that you may need more than this though as there will be some that break and you'll have scraps.