Make your favourite muffins and then add these cute oreo spiders for an easy Halloween bake

I saw this Halloween oreo spider muffin/cupcake decoration idea on Pinterest and decided to give it a go!

The muffins

Make whatever muffins are your favourite. You could make cupcakes instead. My recipe index has lots of muffin and cupcake recipes if you need some ideas. For example: chocolate fudge muffins, snickers muffins or Halloween brownie cupcakes.

I made plain vanilla sponge muffins: 4 eggs (large or medium), 8 oz (225g) self-raising flour, 8 oz caster sugar, 8 oz butter/baking margarine and a tsp of vanilla essence/extract. Beat together the butter and sugar until fluffy, stir in the eggs until combined and finally fold in the flour. Divide the mixture into your cases (12 muffins or 24 cupcakes) and bake for about 20 minutes at 180 degrees C (160 fan, 356 degrees F, Gas Mark 4) until risen and golden.

Decoration ingredients (for 12 muffins)

•  115 g /  4 oz butter (at room temperature)
•  230 g /  8 oz icing sugar (sieved)
• Food colourings – I used orange and green gel colourings
• A packet of oreos the flavour of your choice. I used mint ones.
• Approx. 50 g / 1.8 oz dark, plain or milk chocolate
• Some candy eyes (they now sell these in my local supermarket but I have bought them online before)

Method

Leave your muffins or cupcakes to cool completely before you decorate them.

Make the buttercream. Use a stand mixer or electric hand beaters to beat the butter for 3-4 minutes until it begins to pale. Add the icing sugar and beat for another 3-4 minutes until the buttercream is smooth. If you have a hood for your mixer, use it to stop the icing sugar being thrown up into a cloud. Alternatively, start the mixing slowly by hand to minimise the risk of an icing sugar explosion!

If using different colours, divide the buttercream into two bowls. Add the food colouring and stir in until you have an even colour. Keep adding colouring until you have the shade you want. Should adding the colouring make your buttercream too thin, just add a little more icing sugar to thicken it up again.

Spoon some buttercream onto your muffins/cupcakes and use the back of a spoon or knife to spread and smooth it onto the top of the cake.

Press an oreo into the buttercream on the top of each of the muffins. You can use a whole oreo, or pull them apart and use just half a cookie on each cake (I went for the second option so the bodies of the spiders would be closer to the surface of the cake).

Break the chocolate into pieces in a heatproof bowl. Melt the chocolate. You can do this by putting the bowl over a pan of hot water on a stove or you can use the microwave. If using the microwave, put the chocolate in for 1 minute, take out and stir. If it needs more heat, give it another 20 seconds and stir again. Continue using short bursts until all the chocolate has melted.

Put the chocolate in a piping bag. I made my own from a plastic freezer bag with a small hole cut in the corner. Pipe 8 chocolate “legs” either side of the oreos. If you don’t want to faff about with melted chocolate, you could also use liquorice laces. Finally, use a small blob of chocolate on the back of each of the candy eyes to stick them to the surface of the oreos.

Set to one side to allow the chocolate to set.

These Halloween oreo spider muffins will keep for 3-5 days if kept in an airtight container in a cool, dry place. It really is an easy option for a Halloween bake with the added flexibility of being able to bake any type of muffin or cupcake you like and use whatever flavour oreos are your favourite.

And they remind me of these little guys from Spirited Away (an unexpected bonus. I love that film!):

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If you’re looking for other Halloween recipes, you could try:

 

Halloween brownie cupcakes with orange and green sponge.

 

 

 

 

 

Chocolate fudge muffins with Halloween chocolate cobwebs

 

 

 

 

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Claire Huston / Art and Soul