Chocolate spider cupcakes: Halloween muffins

For the past few years, celebrating Halloween has become part of our All Saints’ Day traditions. Pumpkins, costumes and spooky-themed sweet and savoury spreads now go hand in hand with our roasted sweet potatoes and chestnuts, huesos de santo, buñuelos de viento and panellets. These deliciously spooky chocolate spider cupcakes for Halloween fulfil the most important requirement of all: delighting the little ones, who are the ones who enjoy this celebration that is here to stay the most.

It is the perfect occasion to have some fun with recipes and give them a playful twist. You’ll see that making little cakes like these spider cupcakes is not particularly complicated, and the result is really cute. Fill a tray with them, place it in the centre of the table, and you’ll see them disappear faster than you can say “trick or treat”!

Here is the recipe for the most deliciously spooky chocolate spider cupcakes for Halloween. Enjoy them with the little ones at home — they’re going to love them!

Ingredients

Ingredients for the cupcakes

• 2 large eggs
• 200 g brown sugar
• 150 ml whole milk
• 125 g butter
• 30 g reduced-fat cocoa powder
• 180 g plain flour
• 12 g vanilla sugar
• 1 pinch of salt
• 8 g baking powder, such as “Royal”

Ingredients for the chocolate topping

• 200 g butter, at room temperature
• 90 g icing sugar
• 12 g vanilla sugar
• 10 g reduced-fat cocoa powder
• 2 egg yolks

Ingredients for decorating the cupcakes

• “Oreo”-style biscuits (one biscuit for each cupcake you have made)
• Edible sugar or liquorice eyes
• Strips of black liquorice for the spiders’ legs

Method

Making the cupcakes

1. Place the butter in a saucepan and heat over a medium heat. Let it cook until it turns golden and develops a lovely toasted aroma similar to hazelnuts. Turn off the heat and leave it to cool.
2. Preheat the oven to 200 °C.
3. Fit the bowl and balloon whisks to your Ankarsrum mixer, add the eggs and brown sugar and whisk until the mixture is very light and airy.
4. In another bowl, add the sifted flour and cocoa powder together with the salt, baking powder and vanilla sugar. Mix well.
5. Add the dry ingredients to the egg and sugar mixture, alternating them with the milk and brown butter (the melted butter).
6. Mix everything together gently until all the ingredients are combined. The result should be a smooth, even batter.
7. Divide the batter between muffin or cupcake cases, filling them to 2/3 of their capacity.
8. Bake the cupcakes for approximately 12–15 minutes at 200 °C.
9. When they are ready, leave them to cool completely on a wire rack before decorating.

Making the chocolate topping

1. Place the room-temperature butter in the bowl of the Ankarsrum mixer and add the icing sugar, vanilla sugar and sifted cocoa powder. Beat the ingredients until you have a fluffy, light and airy cream.
2. Add one egg yolk and beat until fully incorporated. Add the second yolk and beat again to incorporate it.
3. Continue beating the mixture until the topping looks smooth and velvety.
4. Transfer the cream to a piping bag fitted with a plain nozzle and set aside.

Decorating the spider cupcakes

1. Cut the liquorice strips into roughly equal-sized pieces to make the spiders’ legs.
2. Spread a generous layer of chocolate topping over each cupcake.
3. Open the “Oreo”-style biscuits, separating the two halves.
   
4. Place a little chocolate topping in the centre of one half of each biscuit and arrange 4 strips of liquorice on each side to resemble the spiders’ legs.
   
5. Place the other half of the biscuit back on top and press down carefully so the legs stay in place.
6. Place the biscuit spiders on top of the cupcakes.
7. To finish, attach the sugar eyes to each biscuit using a little of the topping as glue. And your spooky Halloween spider cupcakes are ready!
   

Suggestions

• If you are confident using a piping bag, you can draw the legs and eyes with tempered chocolate. Use dark chocolate for the legs and white chocolate for the eyes, adding a dot of dark chocolate to each one.
  
• You can bake the cases in a tin such as the Baker&Salt® non-stick muffin tin to help them keep their shape during baking.