Chocolate Spider Web Cupcakes Food

SPIDERWEB CUPCAKES

Steps:

• Heat oven to 350°F (325°F for dark or nonstick pans). Make and cool cupcakes as directed on box for 24 cupcakes.
• Tint frosting with red and yellow food colors to make orange frosting. Spread frosting over tops of cupcakes.
• Squeeze circles of decorating gel on each cupcake; pull knife through gel from center outward to make web. To make each spider, roll out 1 gumdrop and cut out 8 strips for legs; place another gumdrop on top. Place spider on cupcake. Store loosely covered.

SPIDER CUPCAKES

Steps:

• Preheat oven to 350 degrees F.
• Sift together the flour and baking soda and set aside. In a mixer fitted with a whip attachment, cream the butter until light and fluffy. Then add both sugars and continue mixing to cream them together. Add the eggs gradually and let them thoroughly mix in. Add the melted unsweetened chocolate and mix in well. Add the vanilla and 1/3 of the yogurt and mix, then add half the dry ingredients, and mix in well. Repeat alternating wet and dry, ending with wet.
• Pour batter into a muffin tins, lined with cupcake papers, filling them 3/4 full. Bake until firm to the touch on the cap of the cupcakes, about 20 minutes. Let cool in the pan, then decorate.
• To make the cupcakes into spiders, frost with your favorite chocolate frosting glue 2 flat chocolate buttons on the top of the cupcake as eyes. Pipe a large white dot on lower half of each button then stick on the chocolate chips, then pipe a tiny white dot on the tip of the chip. In red, pipe a smile and to make them tarantulas, pipe a red hourglass shape on its back. Cut black liquorice into 3-inch long pieces and tuck 8 of them into the rim of the cupcake cap to make legs.
• To serve the cupcakes, with black frosting pipe a spider web onto a middle of a large white plate and place the spiders around the edge.
• Notes about the recipe: I always buy the large tub of plain yogurt because it's so much cheaper than buying all those small ones, and the next thing I know, it's gone moldy for lack of attention. So this is a good place to use a large quantity of it up. You can use sour milk instead or sour your own by squeezing a good amount of lemon juice into whole milk and letting it stand 2 minutes to curdle and sour.
• Here's proof that there is something even cuter than a cupcake. Princess Diana's butler, Paul Burrell, taught me how to turn cupcakes into spiders. He made these on the Princes' birthdays, as part of a complete bug theme party with a big ladybug cake and cheese pastries coiled up like snails, with antennae made of chives. I make them for my prince's birthdays; my son Gio loves them.

SPIDER WEB CHOCOLATE FUDGE MUFFINS

Steps:

• Preheat the oven to fan 170C/ conventional 190C/gas 5 and line a muffin tin with 10 paper muffin cases. Break the chocolate into a heatproof bowl, add the butter and liquid. Melt in the microwave on Medium for 30-45 seconds (or set the bowl over a pan of gently simmering water). Stir and leave the mixture to cool.
• Mix the flour, bicarbonate of soda and both sugars in a bowl. Beat the egg in another bowl and stir in the soured cream, then pour this on the flour mixture and add the cooled chocolate. Stir just to combine - don't overmix or it will get tough.
• Spoon the mixture into the cases to about three quarters full. Bake for 20 minutes until well risen. Loosen the edges with a round-bladed knife, let them sit in the tins for a few minutes, then lift out and cool on a wire rack.
• For the topping, make two piping bags out of greaseproof paper (or cut the ends off two clean plastic bags). Break the dark and white chocolate into separate bowls and melt in the microwave on Medium for 2 minutes (or over a pan as in step 1). Put 2 spoonfuls of dark chocolate in one bag and the same of white chocolate in the other.
• Working with one muffin at a time, spread with dark chocolate from the bowl, letting it run down a bit, then pipe four concentric circles of white chocolate on top. Using a small skewer, drag through the circles at regular intervals, from the centre to the edge, to create a cobweb effect. Repeat with four more muffins. On the remaining five, spread over the white chocolate and decorate with the dark. Best eaten the day they're made - even better while the chocolate's soft.

SPIDER-WEB CUPCAKES

Steps:

• Preheat oven to 350 degrees. Whisk together flour, cocoa powder, granulated sugar, baking soda, baking powder, and salt in a bowl. Add eggs, buttermilk, oil, vanilla, and water; whisk until smooth.
• Divide batter evenly among paper-lined standard muffin tins. Bake, rotating tins halfway through, until a tester inserted in centers comes out clean, about 16 minutes. Let cupcakes cool in tins on wire racks 10 minutes. Turn out onto racks and let cool completely. Cupcakes can be stored at room temperature up to 2 days before glazing and decorating.
• Whisk together confectioners' sugar and milk until smooth (glaze will be very thick). Spread onto cupcakes and let stand until glaze is set. Place cupcakes on a doily or serving platter in tight concentric circles.
• Place melted chocolate in a parchment cone or resealable plastic bag with a tiny hole snipped in one corner. Pipe a straight line from middle of top row of cupcakes to bottom. Pipe a second line going across middle of cupcakes, from left to right. Pipe 6 more lines through center point, spaced evenly apart; lines should form 16 even wedges. Create a web pattern by piping slightly curved, swooping lines to connect spokes, starting from center, letting chocolate flow between cupcakes.