Desserts

Trick or treat! These chocolate cobweb cupcakes are absolutely delicious and a confirmed crowd pleaser. Make these for Halloween or for any day of the year really – they are as good to eat as they are to look at!

I adore this chocolate cupcake recipe because it is so easy and incredibly delicious plus it gives me the moistest chocolate cupcakes ever – dry cakes and dry cupcakes are one of my pet peeves!

The creamy vanilla frosting that these chocolate cobweb cupcakes are topped with is actually a crusting buttercream that tastes really lovely and is perfect for piping swirls, rosettes etc as it really holds its shape while remaining soft and creamy inside – this has to be my favourite recipe for pipeable frosting.

The fun cobweb toppers that the cupcakes are crowned with are made from melted chocolate and are a breeze to make!

Growing up, Halloween was something we’d just read about in books or comics or watch on tv or movies. Thanks in most part to Hollywood, many of us knew of Halloween as the spookiest time of the year when folks don scary costumes and kids dress up in adorably spooky costumes or as their favourite characters from books, cartoons or tv shows and movies and go trick-or-treating for candy.

I am a big fan of all things “horror” be it scary movies, creepy stories, haunted houses – you name it. So you can imagine how the spookiest time of the year makes me feel. The late October autumn/fall weather adds an additional something to the atmosphere; I love it! Even if Halloween isn’t celebrated in Pakistan as such, at least those of us who want to enjoy it can do so in ways that make us happy, be it pumpkin carving, making scary costumes or coming up with cutely creepy food!

The only time we actually kind of ‘celebrated’ Halloween was in the early ’90s in Daharki. A few Canadian engineers had been emlpoyed by Engro to help set up its new fertilizer plant that had been shipped from Canada. So they, along with their families, had relocated to the Engro Colony in Daharki from Canada until the new plant was up and running. It was Halloween, and the Canadians thought why not celebrate Halloween with the Pakistani residents of the colony and it was a great idea indeed.

Since there was obviously no “trick-or-treat” culture in the colony, the Canadian families arranged an evening Halloween party at the colony’s Club and everyone was invited. The Halloween celebration was more of a fancy dress party for us non-Canadians and it was a lot of fun.

There were some really nice things to eat at the party, made by the Club and I think some made by the Canadian ladies. As there are none of those huge gorgeous orange pumpkins growing in the middle of Sindh, the Canadians made do with what was available; they carved those classic scary Jack-o’-Lantern pumpkin faces on stocky little roundish green kaddus from the vegetable shop at the local Gulnar Market. Necessity truly is the mother of invention!

The party was arranged within a day or so of being decided which left almost no time for anyone to think of or make any elaborate costumes. All the kids were in costume and by costumes I mean all of us more or less improvised with whatever we had lying around at home or could borrow from friends.  I went to the party dressed as a fairy. That decision was based solely on a shimmery green (the hue of green that was known as “bottle green” back then; haven’t heard that color described as such in decades!) dress that I owned and I think we created a makeshift wand for me to hold from a small cane stick with one of those decorative stars that you get at party decoration stores stuck at the top. So I was a fairy and a wingless one into the bargain as there was absolutely no time to make any DIY fairy wings.

Fast forward to the present and with that one Halloween celebrated long ago, there was not much after that and frankly there are still no Halloween celebrations as such apart from a few parties here and there. But in the last few years, social media and Instagram and Pinterest in particular, have literally brought Halloween to the rest of the world with the celebration becoming something exciting to look forward to. There is an amazing array of wonderful Halloween ideas such as for food, decor and makeup shared by bloggers, makeup artists and other insanely creative folks that has made the countdown to Halloween one of the most exciting times of the year, for me at least.

This year, I have decided to do the creepy-cool half skull makeup look made popular by the uber talented makeup artist Chrisspy that she posted on her YouTube channel back in 2014. Though I obviously cannot come even remotely close to matching her finesse and experience as a makeup artist, I think I did a pretty okay job practicing getting the half skull look to look decent enough, haha!  Fingers crossed for the final look on the day! You can watch Chrisspy’s tutorial here as she uses her mastery over makeup to transform her look in minutes.

Just like Chrisspy, the sheer scale of talent and creativity of ideas, be it makeup, costume design, baking or anything really, on social platforms such as YouTube, Pinterest etc is nothing short of staggeringly impressive; so many great ideas and the fact that people share them in near microscopic detail to make it as easy as possible for anyone who might want to try them – how amazing is that! Thank you kind, helpful and crazily talented people for sharing your wonderful ideas and techniques so wholeheartedly!

I too wanted to do something in the spirit of Halloween (pun intended, hehe!). I had been wanting to put my go to chocolate cupcake recipe on the blog for a while so thought of making some Halloween-ish cupcakes to accommodate that idea. So I started browsing Pinterest for some spooky cupcake ideas and came across so many amazing Halloween cupcakes! It was hard to choose just one idea but these Pumpkin Chocolate Spiderweb Cupcakes by Bright-Eyed Baker frosted with orange colored frosting and topped with chocolate spiderweb toppers stood out as they were so arrestingly beautiful! So I decided that these would be my food inspiration for Halloween this year and that is how my chocolate cobweb cupcakes came to be.

The chocolate cupcake recipe I use most is a chocolate cake recipe that was shared by someone back in Daharki during the late ’90s – early 2000s and was titled “Deep Chocolate Cake.” It is such a flavourful and supermoist recipe that I instantly fell in love with it. Years later I discovered it is actually the recipe for Hershey’s Black Magic Cake. It is pretty much the same recipe that Ina Garten used to make “Beatty’s Chocolate Cake” on an episode of “The Barefoot Contessa” so, if the recipe has her approval, then you know it must be pretty good.

The vanilla frosting recipe is a very slight adaptation of the wonderful Crusting American Buttercream Icing by Peggy Does Cake. It is a very good recipe, not overly sweet or too intensely buttery and the original can be found here.

I used orange coloured frosting for my Chocolate Cobweb Cupcakes plus the classic bewitching purple of Halloween, thanks to a post on Wilton’s Instagram earlier this month of chocolate cupcakes with purple frosting topped with mint green spiderwebs! Wilton has been posting some really fun Halloween ideas this month so you might want to check them out.

So before we go on to actually making and decorating the cupcakes let’s keep the following in mind:

• The first time I made orange icing for these cupcakes by mixing red and yellow gel food colors (both by AmeriColor) I added the red a little too enthusiastically which meant that I had to use A LOT of yellow to bring it to any semblance of orange. I did end up with a very vibrant, heart-stopping orange but also ended up thinning my frosting a bit – yes, even gel food colors, when used in copious amounts, can affect the texture of your frosting so note to self: Practice restraint when using food colors! You can obviously use orange food color for the frosting. AmeriColor’s “Electric Orange” seems to be a popular choice for bright orange frosting.
• The chocolate cupcake toppers are very delicate. If you live in a place with a warmer climate it would be best to freeze the toppers until ready to serve and add them to complete your chocolate cobweb cupcakes right before serving. They’ll soften to room temperature fairly quickly.  Literally seconds after being placed on the cupcakes, the toppers began bending at the base which is the point where they’d been pushed into the frosting and finally, gently toppled over. The toppled cobwebs then softened and meltingly drooped over the frosting which kind of gave them a fairly cool look in a creepy sort of way, which if less pretty, was actually far more realistic as you can see in the photo above.
• I discovered, rather very late in the day (after 2 attempts at making the chocolate cobwebs and having them topple over the cupcakes both times) that it is best to use chocolate that contains no cocoa butter to make the toppers as that kind of chocolate sets up firm and is not prone to softening just seconds after being placed on buttercreamed cupcakes. I used Hershey’s semisweet chocolate chips to make the cobwebs, which obviously contain cocoa butter, hence the super quick softening and yes I wish I had researched more before attempting to make the toppers. Candy coating or candy melts might work well too in creating firm toppers. I would still place the toppers atop the cupcakes just before serving to be on the safe side.
• Serve the frosted chocolate cobweb cupcakes at room temperature. Store them airtight and if they’ve been in the fridge, allow them to come to room temperature before serving. Cold cupcake and cold frosting are not very nice, unless it’s a whipped cream frosted cupcake.

Chocolate Cobweb Cupcakes

Recipe Type: Desserts    Author: Alice In Eatland

Prep Time: 30 Minutes    Cook Time: 20 Minutes    Total Time: 50 Minutes    Serves: 10 – 12

Moist chocolate cobweb cupcakes with swirls of creamy vanilla frosting – perfect for the spookiest time of the year or for any time of the year!

CUPCAKES:

INGREDIENTS

• Around 12 – 14 (1.5″ base) cupcake liners/paper bake cups
• 1/2 cup milk
• 2 tbsp white vinegar
• 1 cup caster sugar or superfine sugar
• 1/2 cup + 1/4 cup + 1/8 cup plain flour
• 1/4 cup + 1/8 cup cocoa
• 1 tsp baking soda
• 1/2 tsp baking powder
• 1/2 tsp salt
• 1 large egg
• 1/4 cup oil
• 1/2 tsp vanilla extract or essence
• 1 tsp instant coffee
• 1/2 cup boiling water

METHOD

1. Preheat oven to 180 degrees C / 350 degrees F.
2. Line cupcake/muffin pans with the cupcake liners/paper bake cups and set aside.
3. Stir the milk and vinegar together in a small cup or bowl to make buttermilk. Set aside.
4. Combine all the dry ingredients, except coffee, in a bowl.
5. Whisk the egg. Stir the buttermilk and add to the egg along with the oil and vanilla.
6. Add the egg mixture to the dry ingredients and beat until well mixed.
7. Stir the instant coffee into the boiling water and carefully stir into the cocoa mixture. Batter will be quite thin.
8. Pour batter into a measuring jug.
9. Fill cupcake liners/paper bake cups with batter almost 3/4 full. I fill them nearly to the top with less than an 1/8 of an inch to spare at the top as I like my cupcakes to have nice high domed tops but if you’re making these for the first time, fill them 1/2 or 3/4ths full to see how they bake in your oven as every oven is different and you don’t want your cupcake batter spilling out and over while baking.
10. Bake 18 – 20 minutes or until cupcakes are risen and a wooden pick inserted near the center comes out almost clean. Its okay if a few crumbs are sticking to the wooden pick. Try not to overbake.
11. Remove baked cupcakes to a wire rack.
12. Cool completely before frosting.

CREAMY VANILLA FROSTING:

INGREDIENTS

• 200 grams salted butter (I use Lurpak’s Slightly Salted Butter), soft but cool
• 1 tbsp water, at room temperature
• 1 lb (around 450 grams) icing sugar, sifted/sieved
• 1 tbsp cream
• 1/2 tbsp vanilla extract or essence
• Orange food colour (I used “Super Red” and “Electric Yellow” both by AmeriColor to make orange)
• Purple food colour (I used “Violet” by Wilton)

METHOD

1. Cream butter until creamy, fluffy and pale in colour.
2. Add the water and beat until combined.
3. Add the rest of the ingredients, except the food colours, and beat until smooth, thick and creamy.
4. Divide the frosting equally into two and colour each half with the food colours.
5. Pipe onto cooled cupcakes and store airtight.
6. If storing in the fridge, allow your frosted chocolate cobweb cupcakes to come down to room temperature for 10 or so minutes before serving.

CHOCOLATE COBWEBS:

1. Print out cobweb templates (I used the one available here by Candiquik – there are some cute bat and cat templates as well and these too would make pretty awesome chocolate toppers).
2. Tape the cobweb printout on a flat cookie sheet or the backside of a flat tray.
3. Lay a sheet of greaseproof or wax paper on top of the printout and tape it flat on top of it. You will be able to see the template design below.
4. Fit a piping bag or a Ziploc bag snipped at one corner with a small plain writing nozzle/icing tip (I used tip number 4 by Ateco).
5. Put 1 cup of dark or semisweet chocolate chips or chopped chocolate (whichever chocolate you use, make sure it has NO cocoa butter in it) in a bowl and microwave on high for 20 seconds. Stir and microwave again in 10 second increments, stirring every time until the chips are melted and smooth.
6. Cool the melted chocolate a few minutes and put into the prepared piping bag.
7. Carefully pipe out the chocolate over the wax paper covered templates, tracing out the pattern beneath. Don’t worry if you’re not super neat, as long as all the lines of each cobweb are connected by the chocolate.
8. Once all the cobwebs have been piped, put the tray or cookie sheet in the fridge to set for at least half an hour.
9. To remove cobwebs, carefully slide a thin spatula or thin flat butter knife under the cobwebs to dislodge them and carefully and quickly place them on top of the frosted cupcakes just before serving.