The other day I shared a Haunted Castle Cake, and I promised I’d share the how to for the cupcakes, so here they are! Haunted forest cupcakes. Get your kids in on the fun to help make these little ghosts, and haunted chocolate tree cupcakes. Show them how to create the ghosts, or let them place the mini chocolate chips on for the eyes and mouth.
Kids would also have fun squeezing out the melted chocolate to form the knotted haunted trees. Don’t worry if the trees are a little messy, that just adds to their character. Then they can present the finished cupcakes to friends for a school or home Halloween party.
Haunted Forest Cupcakes
Ingredients
- Chocolate cupcakes
- Chocolate icing
- Melting Chocolate
- White decorator icing
- Wide round decorator tip like Wilton # 12
- 2 Pastry bags
- Mini Chocolate chips
- Toothpicks
Instructions
- Bake the cupcakes according to the mix or recipe instructions, and set them aside to cool.
- While the cupcakes are baking and cooling, print out the haunted tree pattern, or create your own 4 to 5 inch haunted tree pattern on white paper. Place the pattern under a large piece of parchment or wax paper, so you can see the pattern from the top.
- Melt chocolate according to the package directions, 1 cup of chocolate will make about 6 trees.
- Once the chocolate is melted, put it into a plastic bag, or pastry bag. Cut the tip off the pastry bag, or a small corner out of the plastic bag.
- Hold the bag over the pattern with the cut side pointing down toward your pattern, and squeeze the bag gently to fill in the pattern with chocolate. Don’t worry if you can see the lines where the chocolate is being piped, it will add to the haunted tree look.
- While the chocolate is still soft, carefully insert a toothpick into the chocolate at the base of the tree, this will be the tree’s support when you add it to the cupcake. If you need to, add more chocolate to cover the toothpick.
- Add mini chocolate chips midway up the trunk of each tree for eyes and a mouth.
- Make one tree for each cupcake, set them aside to cool and harden.
- Once the cupcakes have cooled, ice them with the chocolate icing.
- Make a ghost on each cupcake with the white decorator icing. Use a large round decorator tip like a Wilton #12 tip and a pastry bag. Fill the pastry bag with white icing, squeeze out the icing with steady pressure on top of the cupcake and lift your hand slowly to pull the bag away leaving a small mound of white icing to form the ghosts.
- Give each ghost two eyes and a mouth with the mini chocolate chips.
- Once the trees have cooled and hardened, gently remove them from the wax paper. If you lose a branch or two don’t worry about it, you’ll just add to the haunted look of the tree.
- Insert the toothpick on the bottom of the tree into the top of the cupcake behind the ghost.
- Line up several cupcakes to form a haunted forest.
Quick Tip:
Use these cupcakes to surround a Haunted Castle Cake for your next Halloween party.
