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Friday, October 29, 2010

Cupcake frenzy! Halloween themed cupcakes Part 2

Hello again! I promised you more posts on cupcakes for Halloween. I believe the previous cupcakes are fairly easy to design, have you tried making them yet? Here are the second batches you can try for Halloween!
 Brainiac Cupcakes

  • 1  batch One-Bowl Chocolate Cupcakes
  • Swiss Meringue Buttercream for Cupcakes

  1. Prepare chocolate cupcakes according to recipe. Cool completely.
  2. While cupcakes are cooling, make buttercream.
  3. To decorate, use a medium round tip (such as Ateco #12) to pipe a mound of buttercream in the center of cupcake, then outline and pipe a brain design over it. 
 Wicked Witch Cupcakes

  • 24  brown mini M&Ms, plus more for filling (optional)
  • Hershey's Chocolate Cupcakes
  • Dirty Green Simple Buttercream
  • 12  chocolate sugar cones
  • 1 pound(s) black licorice laces, cut into 1/4-inch, 1/2-inch, and 2-inch lengths
  • 12  candy corns
  1. Using a melon baller, scoop out the center of each cupcake and fill with mini M&Ms, if desired.
  2. Cover the tops of each cupcake with a generous mound (about 1/3 cup) of buttercream. Insert one candy corn into each cupcake to form a nose. Using brown mini M&Ms, insert two into each cupcake to form eyes. Place two short lengths of licorice above the eyes to form eyebrows for the witch. Place the shorter licorice lengths above the eyebrows to form bangs. Place an inverted cone on top of bangs, pressing gently into buttercream to adhere. Place the longer licorice lengths under the cone hat to form the hair.
 Tentacle Alien Monster Cupcake

Prepare the vanilla or chocolate cupcake recipe. Spread each cupcake with a thin layer of meringue buttercream tinted with a few drops of green food coloring. Cut strips of green taffy and attach around the top of each cupcake. For the eye, slice a yellow gumdrop in half and press into the top of the cupcake. A piece of black licorice attached in front of the gumdrop completes the creepy gaze.

Monday, October 25, 2010

Cupcake frenzy! Cute ideas for Halloween themed cupcakes

Don't know what food to prepare for a Halloween party? Make some cupcakes and decorate them Halloween specials!! Everyone will go gaga over your cupcakes design. These are very unique ones that I am about to share with you here.
 The Big Eyed Alien Cupcake
Prepare the vanilla or chocolate cupcake recipe. Spread each cupcake with a thin layer of meringue buttercream tinted with a few drops of green food coloring. For the small eye, attach a mini marshmallow and create a pupil by painting on melted chocolate (microwave 1/2 cup chocolate chips for 1 minute). For the large eye, push the chocolate chip, tip down, into a regular-size marshmallow, then cut Gummi tape for an eyelid. For teeth, place 5 mini marshmallows along the bottom of the cupcake.
Stenciled Chocolate Cupcakes
  • 1/2 cup(s) all-purpose flour
  • 3/4 cup(s) unsweetened Dutch-process cocoa powder
  • 1 1/2 cup(s) sugar
  • 1 1/2 teaspoon(s) baking soda
  • 3/4 teaspoon(s) baking powder
  • 3/4 teaspoon(s) salt
  • 2 large eggs
  • 3/4 cup(s) warm water
  • 3/4 cup(s) buttermilk
  • 3 tablespoon(s) vegetable oil (such as safflower)
  • 1 tablespoon(s) pure vanilla extract
  • Confectioners' sugar, for dusting
  1. Preheat oven to 350 degrees F. Line 2 standard muffin tins with paper liners. Whisk together flour, cocoa powder, sugar, baking soda, baking powder, and salt in a medium bowl.
  2. Mix in eggs, water, buttermilk, oil, and vanilla until smooth, about 3 minutes. Divide batter evenly among prepared muffin tins. Bake, rotating tins halfway through, until tops spring back when lightly touched, about 20 minutes. Let cool in tins on wire racks.
  3. Before serving, place a stencil atop each cupcake, and dust with confectioners' sugar. Carefully remove stencil.
Mummies Cupcakes
Prepare the vanilla or chocolate cupcake recipe. Spread each cupcake with a thin layer of meringue buttercream. Add jelly beans dotted with melted chocolate for the eyes and red Gummi candy for the mouth. Using a ribbon tip (such as Ateco #44), pipe bands of buttercream.

This is it for today! I will post more cupcake ideas very soon for you to get your Halloween party ready! Happy baking!

Saturday, October 23, 2010

Things You Can Do for Halloween

Pay a lot of attention to your lighting. Turn your lights very low, or even turn them off, using only candles to create a spooky Halloween glow. We carry candles that use LED flicker candles, meaning it is completely flame-less so you would not have to worry about fire hazards! 

Halloween Indoor Spooky Ghost and Witch Graveyard Scene LED Flicker Candles (Set of 2

Fill your home with spooky wisps of smoke and fog made from dry ice. You can even use a strobe light to create a spooky atmosphere with the smoke effect. 

Halloween In/Outdoor Flashing Mini Strobe light
Make a few ghastly head centerpieces for your buffet. Beware! With these ghouls looking over your food, there may be lots of leftovers!

Place shrunken apple heads in the least expected places such as on dining room or kitchen chairs, in your guests' coat pockets, or at the bottom of a snack bowl. Get busy now - these little babies take a couple of weeks to reach perfection.

Play spooky Halloween music inside and outside your house. We've had speakers outside our home for years, and the trick-or-treaters always love the scary sounds as they come up our driveway.

Welcome your guests with spooky jack-o-lanterns lining your walkway. Or instead, you could opt for cute smiling jack-o-lanterns like these!
Halloween Indoor Smiling Paper Pumpkins Hanging Lantern Decoration (Set of 3)
Create creepy spiders to scatter everywhere including your buffet table, chairs, ceilings and anyplace else your guests might be surprised.
Halloween Indoor Fuzzy PomPom Spiders Small Decoration (Set of 24)
Spread cobwebs in choice corners of your home and selectively place miniature spiders in each web.
Halloween In/Outdoor Scary Black Spider Web Hanging Decoration
Halloween In/Outdoor Spooky White Spiderweb with Ten Spiders Decoration
Make bat, witch or black cat silhouettes to hide in corners or on your windows.
Halloween In/Outdoor Window Cling or Hang Decoration- Spooky Ghosts
Halloween Indoor Window Cling or Hang Decorations- Cat and Bats
Visit our website now to get your house ready for trick-o-treaters! We ship within 24 hours and shipping & handling is all FREE. You don't have to put a dent in your wallet to enjoy decorating your house for the holidays :)

Wednesday, October 20, 2010

25 Halloween decorating ideas for ghoulish fun

Stop playing nice and start spooking your family with mysterious decor. Creep out the neighbors with these chilling outdoor Halloween decorations. From the clever to the creepy, these easy Halloween decorating ideas will keep everyone on their toes. All you need are some basic supplies and a wicked sense of humor. Family and friends will be left wondering how sweet you really are, when you can conjure up such ghoulish fun once a year.

What a Tangled Web You Weave
Use spider web decorations from the store or unravel a pair of nylons into thin strands to decorate curtain rods and vases. Now you have a great excuse to let the dust collect; it'll make your Halloween decorations that much more authentic.

Scare the Boo Out of Them
Tuck spooky hand-painted pumpkins and ghosts in unexpected places around your home, including the cabinet where you store the toilet paper or in a refrigerator drawer.

Biting Humor
Place a pair of vampire fanged teeth in a glass of water in the bathroom, with a tube of denture cream nearby.

Skeleton in Your Closet
Hang an old skeleton costume or a skeleton decoration in a shared closet.

Lip Service
Remember the wrong shade of red lipstick you bought? The one that makes you look ghastly? Write cryptic messages or symbols on mirrors, including, "You're next" or "It's too late to run."

Spine-Tingling
Make new covers for your books' spines, with new spooky titles, including "How to Cook Bats," "Exercising Your Demons,"  or  "Top Secret Potions."

Shadows and Silhouettes, Oh My!
Tape full sheets of orange tissue paper to the inside of windows. Cut out large silhouettes of spiders and bats. Keep some of the silhouettes small to keep them guessing: is it real or just pretend?

Scaredy-crows
Gather those clothes that are too threadbare for donation and stuff them with the mess of leaves in your yard. Create a group of scarecrow caricatures, one to represent each family member, even the family dog.

Indoor Tombstones
Create indoor tombstones using chalkboard paint on cardboard. Write chilling messages with chalk, and change the message every day, when nobody is looking.

The Walls Have Eyes
It may feel like you're walking around with eyes behind your head sometimes, especially if you have kids. Spread that keen second sense around by decorating pictures and cabinet doors with pairs of paper eyes.

Buried Alive
Hammer two garden stakes or tree twigs in the ground and place a pair of old shoes onto them, sole side up to look like someone is buried there.

What's Your Poison?
Adhere warning labels to beverages. Tomato or cranberry juice are now "vampire blood," olives are now "skin wrinklers," and milk is now "shrieking potion."

Valley of the Dolls
Creep kids out with a doll graveyard. Tuck those broken-down Barbie dolls or doll parts into coffins made from juice boxes.

Egg-cellent Eyesight
Save an egg carton and fill it with homemade eyeballs. Paint ping pong, golf or styrofoam balls to look like eyeballs, complete with icky red veins.

Front yard or Graveyard?
Use outdoor gray spray paint to turn cardboard into tombstones. Stencil scary messages with white paint. Write, "RIP Reason," "Cheater" or "Vacancy."

Waxing Halloween
Drip red crayon onto the top of white or black tapered candles, to look like blood. There will be no complaints about dinner tonight, with this eerie setting.

Sour Grapes
Hide creepy spiders and centipedes in a bowl of fresh fruit. Nobody will dare touch your morning kiwi now!

Picture This
Embellish your existing family portraits with fangs, horns, warts and other ghoulish details. Cut the shapes out of construction paper and tape to glass picture frames.

Finger Foods
Create stray mummy fingers by wrapping craft sticks with white first aid wrap. Make one end wider than the other and paint that end red. Add a fake fingernail to the other side. (Mummies can be fancy, too, you know.) Toss into the silverware drawer.

Hand in the Kitchen
Stuff a dishwashing glove with old nylons or newspaper and tie off the end with twine. Paint it in a skin-like shade and leave leave it with the utensils.

A Witch of One's Own
Place a pair of red and white striped socks and a pair of sparkly red slippers near your home's foundation.

Six Heads Are Better than One
Cover vases or old coffee cans with your creepy collection of scary masks or photos your least favorite politicians and celebrities and line them up on the windowsill.

Shower Scene
Glue black tissue paper to a poster board and cut out the shape of Norman Bates's mother, attacking birds or Freddy Krueger's bladed hand and attach the scary silhouette to the shower curtain.

Guess Who's Coming to Dinner?
Make all of your bewitching friends feel at home with dining room chairs covered with black tulle and adorned with tiny spiders.

Simply Devilish
Hang a black garbage bag full of leaves. Or better yet, convince someone else to do it. The neighbors will wonder what you have hiding in the eerie sack.

via Yahoo Shine!