If you have kids, you may well find yourself needing to bake something for a Halloween event. Or maybe you got invited to a grown-up Halloween party and you volunteered to bring a dessert. And you want to show up with something more than just some plain old cupcakes.

These adorable little mummy cupcakes don’t take much more time that just frosting a regular batch of cupcakes, but the fun/cool factor is extremely high. If you do have kids, grab them and ask them to help. So what if one of two of the mummies looks like they are unraveling a little bit.  That’s part of the charm of bringing a homemade item—that it looks a little homemade.

My older son Jack pronounced these the best chocolate cupcakes I’ve ever made, and I’ve made a lot of cupcakes. So speaking of plain old cupcakes, think of these even after Halloween has come and gone, and skip the mummy frosting part for a delicious, basic chocolate cupcake recipe. You can use any frosting you like, including this one, and just give them a good smear of frosting for other occasions. I clearly will be making them for Jack’s birthday in January.

Mummy Cupcakes

Chocolate Cupcake Ingredients:

1 cup cocoa powder

2 cups sugar

2 ½ cups all-purpose flour

1 teaspoon baking powder

1 teaspoon baking soda

1 teaspoon kosher salt

4 large eggs, at room temperature

¾ cup vegetable or canola oil

½ cup sour cream

1 teaspoon pure vanilla extract

Marshmallow Frosting Ingredients:

½ cup (1 stick) unsalted butter, softened

1 (7-ounce) jar marshmallow fluff

2 ½ cups confectioners’ sugar

1 teaspoon pure vanilla extract

2 to 3 tablespoons milk, preferably whole, or half and half, or heavy cream

48 m n’m’s, skittles, or other small round colored candies

Directions:

Preheat the oven to 350 F°.  Line 24 muffin tins with paper liners, and spray with nonstick cooking spray.

Bring 1 ½ cups of water to a boil in a saucepan, then remove from the heat and whisk in the cocoa powder and sugar until smooth.  Allow the chocolate mixture to cool for about 15 minutes.

While the chocolate mixture cools, in a medium bowl combine the flour, baking powder, baking soda, and salt.  In another medium bowl, using an electric mixer, beat together the eggs, oil, sour cream, and vanilla.  Add the chocolate mixture and beat just to combine.  Add the flour mixture in three batches, beating on low speed just until the flour is incorporated.

Pour the batter into the cupcake liners, filling each one ¾ full.  Bake for about 20 minutes, until a wooden skewer inserted into the middle of a cupcake comes out clean.  Cool in the pan on a wire rack for 10 minutes, then remove the cupcakes from the pan and finish cooking them in their liners on the wire rack.

While the cupcakes are cooling, make the Marshmallow Frosting.  In a medium bowl using an electric mixer blend together the butter, marshmallow fluff, confectioners’ sugar and vanilla.  Add the milk one tablespoon at a time until the frosting is creamy but still firm.  You may not need all of the milk.

To decorate the cooled cupcakes, fill a pastry bag fitted with a basketweave decorating tip (Wilton #47 or Ateco #98, for example) with the frosting.  Pipe long bands using across the cupcakes, leaving a space in the middle to add the eyes.

Place two candies in the space for eyes, and use a tiny piping tip to add a little dot of frosting in the middle of each candy for the pupils.  You could also use a toothpick, and dab a bit of frosting in the middle of each candy.  You can mix and match the candy colors just for fun.

Get more great recipes from Katie Workman here.