Here are some spooky cute cupcakes to haunt your Halloween this year. Get your kids in on the fun by having them help you make parts of the Haunted Forest Cupcakes. These cupcakes go great with the Haunted Castle Cake.

Ingredients

• 6 chocolate cupcakes
• ½ cup chocolate icing
• 1 cup melting chocolate
• ¼ cup white decorator icing
• wide round decorator tip (like Wilton #12)

• 2 pastry bags
• 36 mini chocolate chips
• 6 toothpicks
• 1 Haunted Tree Pattern

Instructions

1.
Print out this Haunted Tree Pattern, or create your own 4 to 5 inch haunted tree pattern on white paper. Place the pattern under a large piece of parchment or wax paper, so you can see the pattern through the parchment or wax paper.

2.
Melt chocolate according to the package directions.
3.
Once the chocolate is melted, pour it into a plastic bag, or pastry bag. Cut the tip off the pastry bag, or a small corner out of the plastic bag.

4.
Hold the bag over the tree pattern with the cut side pointing down toward your pattern and squeeze the bag gently to fill in the pattern with chocolate. Don't worry if you can see the lines where the chocolate is being piped, it will add to the haunted tree look.
5.
While the chocolate is still soft, carefully insert a toothpick into the chocolate at the base of the tree. Once the chocolate hardens, this toothpick will be the tree's support when you add it to the cupcake. If needed, add more chocolate to cover the toothpick to add more support.

6.
Add mini chocolate chips midway up the trunk of each tree for eyes and a mouth.
7.
Make 6 trees (1 for each cupcake) and set them aside to cool and harden.
8.
Frost the cupcakes with the chocolate icing.

9.
Make a ghost on each cupcake with the white decorator icing. Use a large round decorator tip like a Wilton #12 tip and a pastry bag. Fill the pastry bag with white icing, squeeze out the icing with steady pressure on top of the cupcake and lift your hand slowly to pull the bag away leaving a small mound of white icing to form the ghosts. (See photo.)

10.
Give each ghost 2 eyes and 1 mouth with the mini chocolate chips.
11.
Once the trees have cooled and hardened, gently remove them from the wax paper. If you lose a branch or two don't worry about it; this will just add to the haunted look of the tree.
12.
Insert the toothpick on the bottom of the tree into the top of the cupcake behind the ghost.

13.
Line up several cupcakes to form a haunted forest.

Tips

• Use these cupcakes to surround a Haunted Castle Cake for your next Halloween party.