The countdown to Thanksgiving is prevented by one college-student favorite holiday: Halloween. Which is smack dab in the middle of midterms, group projects and student group festivities, all of which require endless snacking.
The answer to group gatherings is from fourth grade; flash back to your classroom Halloween party, with costumes, candy, pizza and someone’s mom had made spiderweb frosted cupcakes.
Here’s what she did, or at least, the college-student version:
Grab your favorite boxed cake mix from Wolly’s or Shaw’s, a can of chocolate frosting, a can of vanilla frosting, cupcake liners, a sandwich baggie and a toothpick.
Make the cake as directed on the box and allow to cool completely or the frosting will melt.
Once cool, frost all the cupcakes with as much chocolate frosting as you enjoy, but making the tops smooth.
For the white icing, be sure to give the can a good stir or four to loosen it up. Grab a sandwich baggie, open it and place a big spoonful into a corner of the bag. Only use one heaping spoonful at a time or it will squirt out the top of the bag, which you do not close (or the air pressure in the baggie will won’t let the icing flow smoothly). Move all the icing into the corner and twist the baggie closed. Carefully cut off the tiniest portion of the corner: the smaller the clip, the thinner the line and the more control you’ll have.
There are now two methods that produce the same look in the end. You can either draw concentric circles inside one another or a large spiral, starting in the middle and moving out. Stop before you get to the edge of the cupcake, leaving roughly two rings of space.
With a toothpick (or a broken piece of spaghetti), starting from the center of the circles/spiral, drag the toothpick out to the edge, crossing all the circles. Rotate the cupcake and finish with a total between 6 and 8 lines. No need to be perfect because real spiders aren’t either!
Once all the cupcakes have been crossed, grab the white icing and trace the drag lines to complete your spiderwebs!
Not a cupcake person but want to Halloween spirit? Try these thumbprint sugar cookies, topped with a candy corn.