Spooky spooky

I missed my last blog post! I didn't even realize it. I was in Ohio for the weekend and time slipped through my fingers. I am excited that we are moving a new direction in programming; the windows application seems a lot more interesting and fun to use. We will get to be a lot more creative with our programs.

Because Halloween is just around the corner, I decided to bake some spooky spider cupcakes. These cupcakes are from the book Cupcakes from the Cake Mix Doctor. They are a really dark cupcake with orange frosting, with a spider cookie on top.

To make the spider cookies, first melt down 2 1/2 cups of chocolate chips with 1/2 cup sugar and 1/2 cup milk. (I used semi-sweet chocolate chunks, as they were on sale this week.) Once that gets all smooth, stir in a 1/2 cup cocoa pebbles cereal and 3/4 cup crushed chow mein noodles. Drop the mixture by spoonfuls onto a foil-lined or parchment-lined baking sheet. Then, stick 8 chow mein noodles into the sides of each little blob to make a spider. It should look like this.

Look at the little guy! He's so cute. Now just put them all in the fridge so they can firm up.

Next, prepare the cupcake batter. Into a large mixing bowl, put one chocolate cake mix, 3 eggs, 1/2 cup vegetable oil, 1 1/3 cups buttermilk, 1 teaspoon vanilla, and 2 tablespoons cocoa powder. Mix it all on low speed for 30 seconds, and then on medium speed for 2 minutes. Scrape down the edges of the bowl with a spatula. It should look like this.

Sorry for the weird shadow. Then, scoop the cupcake batter into paper-lined muffin tins. I used regular-sized and mini-sized, but you can do whatever. Bake them a 350* for about 20 minutes, or until they spring back when lightly touched.

Now for the assembly. I just used store-bought frosting and dyed it orange. You can do whatever. First, you want to put a little bit of orange frosting into a ziploc bag and cut off the corner so you can give the little spiders eyes.

Then, you'll just want to frost the cupcake with the orange frosting and place the spider cookie on top! That simple. I frosted most of the little cupcakes with some leftover chocolate frosting and put candy corn on them. Mmmmm...