If you’re looking to make a festive sweet treat to bring to a Halloween party, these spider cupcakes are an easy way to add a little fun into the spooky holiday! Round up the little ones for a little decorating fun as you create sweet and crunchy spider cupcakes for everyone to enjoy. Thank you to Pure Organic for sponsoring this post!
Growing up, I LOVED celebrating Halloween at school. As an elementary school student, we had a half-day of “real” school in the morning and the second half of the school day was dedicated to celebrating Halloween. At lunchtime, we’d all immediately forget anything we learned in the morning, change into our costumes and likely annoy the heck out of our teachers as we practically burst with excited energy for the rest of the day. We’d line up by classroom, circle the school in our costumes as part of a “costume parade” so our parents could snap a billion pictures and spend the rest of the afternoon running around, giggling with friends and snacking on more than our fair share of Halloween treats.
This will be my first year on the other side of a school’s Halloween party and I am SO pumped! Chase’s preschool celebrates Halloween with a weekend “Trunk or Treat” party and picturing a bunch of toddlers and little ones dressed up in their Halloween costumes is almost too cute to handle. A quick search of Pinterest for Halloween-themed treats to bring to the party left me feeling overwhelmed and inadequate until I clicked away and started brainstorming easier ideas. I saw a few spider-themed desserts that looked more manageable and set off to the grocery store to round up a few things to make a semi-homemade Halloween sweet treat I’m excited to share with you today.
Now here’s the real beauty of these cupcakes: They can be as labor-intensive or as simple as you want. Heck yes! I opted to make them with jarred icing and a box cake mix (I love Simple Mills mixes for their unprocessed ingredients but they are made with almond flour, so keep that in mind if your school forbids nuts) but you can absolutely make your own cupcakes from scratch if you prefer. Or you can make this Halloween treat even easier and opt for store-bought cupcakes!
The real fun comes in decorating the cupcakes, especially if you rope your toddler in and ask them to “help” you. (Heavy emphasis on the quotation marks around the word “help.”) Chase loves serving as my sous-chef in the kitchen these days, so once I had the cupcakes baked, iced and ready to decorate, I pulled up his kitchen stand and we made these spider cupcakes together using chocolate shortbread cookies (I used Rustic Bakery cookies and found them at The Fresh Market), white chocolate chips and Pure Organic Layered Fruit Bars.
The cookies served as the spider’s body and I simply placed one on top of an iced cupcake. I then carefully dipped the bottom of two white chocolate chips into the remaining icing and placed them on top of the cookie for the spider’s eyes. Using a sharp knife, I spilt the Pure Organic Layered Fruit Bars in half and cut out tiny spider legs from the fruity snack.
I’ve been keeping a couple of the Pure Organic Layered Fruit Bars and Pure Organic Fruit & Veggie Strips in my purse for months now because Chase absolutely adores them and this sweet snack is made without anything artificial. One of the Pure Organic Layered Fruit Bars has 2/3 of a serving of fruit and the texture of the bars worked perfectly for the spider legs since they’re dense enough to stick out of the cupcake without becoming too floppy, but still soft enough for little ones to bite into and enjoy.
We had such a fun time making these cupcakes together… and an even better time eating them!
Halloween Spider Cupcakes
Print
Halloween Spider Cupcakes
- Prep Time: 5 mins
- Cook Time: 15 mins
- Total Time: 20 mins
- Yield: 12 1x
- Category: Dessert, cupcakes, holiday
Description
If you’re looking to make a festive sweet treat to bring to a Halloween party, these spider cupcakes are an easy way to add a little fun into the spooky holiday!
Ingredients
- 12 frosted chocolate cupcakes, plus approximately 2 tablespoons of additional icing
- 12 chocolate cookies
- 24 white chocolate chips
- 12 Pure Organic Layered Fruit Bars
Instructions
- Place one chocolate cookie on top of each frosted cupcake, lightly pressing the cookie into the icing so it will remain in place.
- Carefully dip the bottom of two white chocolate chips into the remaining icing and place on top and toward the front of the cookie to serve as the spider’s eyes.
- Using a sharp knife, carefully cut the Pure Organic Layered Fruit Bars in half and slice out thin spider legs.
- Tuck the “legs” underneath the cookie to keep them in place.
- Enjoy!
Oh, and in case you were thinking I have a cupcake-decorating prodigy on my hands, Chase’s decorated cupcake didn’t make the cut for these pictures, mainly because he ate his immediately… and also because it looked like a smeared polka-dot spider since he was a little heavy-handed with the white chocolate chips. At least we had fun, right!?
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These are precious!! They are going to be a hit!
Thank you! And I hope so! Chase was really into them!
These are so cute! I LOVED Halloween too as a kid. I work in an elementary school and we just do a parade so all the kids can show off their costumes, not afternoon parties like when we were in school. And I’m still trying to think of my work/kid appropriate Halloween costume.
I LOVE the costume parades — they’re so darn cute!
Side note — loving your new recipe layout. So much easier for me to print! Thank you!!
So glad you like it!!!
These are so cute!!! I may have to give them a try for my babies, my little girl is all about cake.
thank you!! really hope your daughter loves them!
These are adorable! I bet the kiddos will love them
These are so cute! I loved halloween growing up and secretly wish I could sneak back into school for our halloween costume parades!
Haha! Me too! They were so fun!
So cute! I bet his classmates will love them. I’m sure Chase’s cupcakes didn’t look that bad but it’s great he loves to help you
These are too cute! Love it!
Kim
http://trendkeeper.me .. $100 BOUTIQUE GIVEAWAY! & Sweater Ideas
These are so cute! I am going to have to make these for my nephews! Chase’s class will love them!! Xoxo
So cute! And even more fun when the kids can help out like Chase did.
Sadly, the way holidays are handled has changed so much. My daughter is now in high school but her elementary school parties were allotted 50 minutes! And only 3 parents could go in to help. I get that school is about learning but I am also if the mindset that it can be fun too.
We always hosted small friend holiday parties and the kids and parents then got to enjoy the holiday fun.
You might watch for fun events around your community. One of our local churches always hosted a trunk or treat and our park district offered a cookie devorating activity. Super fun!
We now host cookie decorating at our house a few times a year. My daughter and I make cut out sugar cookies and royal icing and her friends absolutely love to hang out and decorate. Over the years I have learned great ways to do this. When the girls arrive each gets a disposable tin foil pan and 6-8 cookies. Everything is set up in the kitchen with sample cookies decorated but we also encourage creativity. When they are done they just take their cookies home in the pans. I always take a picture of their completed cookies. Making great memories!
Oh my gosh! How cute are these?!
These are so adorable! Also, heck yeah to celebrating holidays in school! Those were always my FAVORITE days. Hyped up on sugar and no schoolwork? Sign me up.
LOLLL! Yes! Holidays were the best!
Aren’t these adorable!
The good ol’ Halloween parade days. What I loved about Halloween when I got older was the “homework” of making a bar graph of how many of each candy you got. This is probably because I am a math geek.
These spider cupcakes are such a cute idea for Halloween.
I remember that so well!!! Ha!
These are so fun! Definitely going to make them with my son! Thanks for the inspo!
We have a trunk or treat this weekend that this will be perfect for!
Hooray! Hope you love them!
Adorable! Looks like a wonderful holiday memory to share with the little ones.
These are so cute
What a cute idea! This is sure to make an appearance at our house during Halloween!
Yay! Hope you all love them!
These are so cute! And don’t seem that hard to make! I need to try them.
They’re really easy! And a lot of fun! Hope you enjoy them if you give them a try!!