Scary Spider Cupcakes
Ingredients
Cakes:
- 200g butter, softened
- 200g caster sugar
- 200g self-raising flour
- 50g cocoa, NOT drinking chocolate
- 4 free-range eggs, beaten
- 2 to 4 tablespoons milk
Butter cream Icing & Decoration:
- 100g softened butter
- 100g icing sugar
- 25g cocoa
- 1 to 2 tablespoon milk
- Liquorice allsorts, sweets (Liquorice Catherine wheels, shoe strings, boot laces etc) for the legs & mouths
- Fried Egg sweets, for the eyes
Instructions
- Pre-heat the oven to 180C/350F/Gas mark 5
- Put the softened butter into a large mixing bowl with the sugar, flour, cocoa and beaten eggs. Mix on slow with a hand mixer and then increase the speed to medium and then to high. Stop and add the milk, tablespoon-by-tablespoon, whisking in between each spoon until you have a smooth mixture.
- Spoon the mixture into well-greased muffin tins, or tins lined with muffin cases – I used some brown foil ones.
- Bake in the pre-heated oven for 20 to 25 minutes, or until well risen. Take the cakes out of the tin and allow them to cool on a wire rack.
- Whilst the cakes are cooling, make the butter cream icing. Put the softened butter and icing sugar into a mixing bowl and mix thoroughly by hand with a fork before adding the cocoa powder – mix all the ingredients together and then add the milk if you need to loosen the mixture for spreading.
- When you are ready to decorate the spider cakes, unravel and cut the liquorice Catherine wheels into “legs” that just dangle over the edge of the cake – mine were about 5cms in length.
- Gently push the legs into the top of the cakes at intervals – the icing will go over the top to keep them in place later, so do not worry how they look! You need 8 legs per spider – of course! Spoon some chocolate butter cream icing to cover the legs. Then place two eyes on the top using the fried egg sweeties, finishing off with a mouth – I used a liquorice allsorts sweet cut into three.
- Place them all on a plate with some extra sweets scattered around them, and watch the looks of delight (or horror) on the children’s faces when they see them!
Scary Spider Cupcakes by Karen Burns-Booth
Karen Burns-Booth is creative freelance food writer & blogger. Her love of seasonal food & recipes stems from her childhood observing her grandmother and mother’s cookery skills. A regular contributor in Country Kitchen magazine, she currently writes for numerous other publications, food, travel and tourism websites and has several recipes in print in compilation cookbooks. She is currently working on a Historical British Cookbook.