Spiderweb Halloween Cupcakes
on Oct 05, 2021, Updated Jul 17, 2024
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Spiderweb Halloween Cupcakes made with dark chocolate, covered in decadent chocolate icing and topped with a web made from marshmallows not only taste fabulous but are the perfect treat for spooky season.
I’m a big fan of seasonal desserts. I think it is so fun to match the holiday with fun food. These cupcakes are just the right amount of spookiness for me. I like to keep Halloween cute and not scary. The addition of the marshmallow spiderweb will get your everyone’s attention at your Halloween party.
You can never go wrong with a chocolate on chocolate dessert. Chocolate cupcakes plus amazing chocolate buttercream is a total win. These cupcakes are moist, delicious, and not difficult to bake. These would be so fun to take to a school Halloween treat, fall festival, or any seasonal get-together.
Table of Contents
Why You’ll Love This Recipe
- Great for Parties: These cupcakes are a hit at Halloween parties, school events, and other parties.
- Impressive Presentation: Despite being easy to make, the spiderweb design looks impressive
- Delicious: Beyond their festive appearance, these cupcakes are simply delicious with their moist cake and creamy frosting.
Ingredients
- Butter
- Granulated Sugar
- Eggs
- Baking Cocoa
- Black Food Coloring
- All-Purpose Flour
- Salt
- Vanilla
- Buttermilk
- Baking Soda
- Vinegar
- Chocolate Buttercream Frosting -two of this recipe
- Mini Marshmallows
See the recipe card below for full information on ingredients and quantities
How to Make Spiderweb Halloween Cupcakes
Step #1. Prep two muffin tins with cupcake wrappers and preheat the oven. In a large mixing bowl, cream the butter, sugar, and eggs. Add cocoa and food coloring. In a small bowl, combine the flour and salt. In another small bowl, mix the milk and vanilla.
Step #3. Fill the cupcake liners 2/3 full with batter. Bake 25 minutes or until the top springs back. Let cool completely. Pipe the chocolate frosting onto each in a tall mound.
Step #2. Alternate 1/3 of the flour mixture with 1/2 the milk mixture into the butter mixture until they have all been incorporated. Mix the baking soda and vinegar together and add to batter immediately.
Step #4. For the webbing, microwave one cup of marshmallows just until they are just puffy. Stick gloved hands into the marshmallows and drape the marshmallow over a frosted cupcake so it pulls off the gloves and spiderwebs on the cupcake. Repeat with remaining cupcakes.
Recipe FAQs
Warm up marshmallows for 1-2 minutes until melted. I like to use gloves to stretch out the marshmallows but you can surely just use your fingers, it will just be messier. Once you have the desired thickness, drape the marshmallow over the icing to get the spiderweb effect. Each cupcake will look a little bit different and that is ok! I made a video of this for Instagram, so pop over there if you want to see this decorating method at work!
The rule of thumb is to fill the cupcake liners about 2/3 full. Do not overfill them or you will have an overflowing cupcake mess, or cupcakes that make a “muffin top” out of the pan and are hard to get out of the pan.
Before you frost your cupcakes you want them to be completely cool. It usually takes around 60 minutes. The butter in the frost will melt on a warm cupcake and get too soft if you don’t wait.
It’s not a deal breaker, but giving a little spritz of non-stick spray will prevent cupcakes from sticking to the wrapper. And it depends a lot from brand to brand on if they stick. So if you have some that work well for you, stick to those!
Expert Tips
- An ice cream scoop or “disher” is the easiest way to fill your cupcake wrappers with batter. A regular size scoop will usually be just right but you can always fill it a little less or give it a tiny bit extra if it’s not.
- Gel food coloring is your best bet for turning your frosting black without changing the frosting’s texture.
- Use good quality cocoa powder in the cupcakes and frosting. Dutch process cocoa powder is always a good choice – look for the container to say “Dutch process” or “alkalized” on it.
More Halloween Recipes to Consider
Pies, Crisps & Tarts
Healthy Pumpkin Pie Recipe
Dessert Recipes
Easy Pumpkin Donut Holes
Halloween Recipes
Halloween Food Ideas for Kids
From Scratch Recipes
Butterbeer
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Spiderweb Halloween Cupcakes
Ingredients
- 3 sticks butter, 1.5 cups, at room temperature
- 1 ½ cup granulated sugar
- 2 eggs
- 2 tablespoons cocoa
- 1 ounce black food coloring
- 2 ½ cup all-purpose flour
- 1 teaspoon salt
- 1 teaspoon vanilla
- 1 cup buttermilk
- 1 teaspoon baking soda
- 1 tablespoon vinegar
- 2 recipe chocolate buttercream frosting
- 1 cup mini marshmallows
Instructions
- Line 2, 12-cup muffin tine with liners and set aside (24 cupcakes total).
- Preheat your oven to 350 degrees F.
- In a large mixing bowl or the bowl of your stand mixer, cream together the butter, sugar, and eggs.
- Add cocoa and food coloring and mix to combine.
- In a small bowl add the flour and salt and stir to combine.
- In a second small bowl, add the vanilla and the buttermilk together.
- Add 1/3 of flour mixture to butter mixture and mix well.
- Add 1/2 of buttermilk mixture to the batter and mix well.
- Add another 1/3 of flour mixture to the batter and mix well.
- Add remaining 1/2 of the buttermilk and mix to combine.
- Add the last of the flour and mix to combine.
- In separate bowl mix baking soda and vinegar together.
- Immediately add to batter and mix well until everything is fully incorporated.
- Pour into paper lined muffin tins. Only fill 2/3 of the way full. DO NOT OVERFILL.
- Bake for 25 minutes or until the cupcakes spring back with lightly touched.
- Let cool completely before adding the frosting.
- Pipe the frosting onto the cupcakes into a tall mound, go a little heavy on the frosting so that there’s something to stick the spiderwebs too.
- To make the webbing melt 1 cup of mini marshmallows in the microwave until melted. Do this in a microwave safe bowl in 30 second intervals. They just need to be puffy, so 30 seconds to about 90 seconds works great.
- With GLOVED hands dip the tips of your fingers into the melted marshmallows then open your fingers over the top of your frosted cupcake and pull the strand over the surface of the frosting. The goal is to get the marshmallow into stretchy melted strands and you are going to pull them against the frosting so that they stick to it and pull of your gloves.
- Repeat with remaining cupcakes, warming up the marshmallows a little as needed so that they remain sticky.
- These would be cute with a little plastic spider on top though I couldn’t find any when I made them.
Notes
- I tried to get a really black icing and I added black food coloring to it. I also try it by adding charcoal powder to it. Both looked great, but truth be told, I didn’t like the taste of food coloring and I didn’t like the texture of the charcoal. You can play around with adding either of those if you like though might might not like the taste and texture too. I haven’t tried it, but if you can find black cocoa powder (like they use to make Oreos) you could probably just use that in the frosting instead of any coloring. In my opinion a good tasting frosting is better than a really black and neat looking one.
- As with all cake recipes, DO NOT OVERMIX. It’s so tempting but it’s better to leave things a little unmixed and have tender cupcakes than end up with tough cupcakes.
- There are really fun giant piping tips that make piping frosting on cupcakes a breeze and make you look like you’re a professional baker.
- You can bake the cupcakes a day ahead of time and store them in an airtight container until you are ready to frost them.
