Decorate Fun Halloween Cupcakes

Bake (or buy) both regular-size cupcakes and mini cupcakes. Frost half with chocolate frosting and half with orange-color frosting (if you can't find orange frosting, use gel-paste food coloring to tint vanilla frosting). Place orange and brown mini M&Ms on top of your frosting to complete the polka-dot look.

Decorate this super-easy Halloween cupcake by starting with two candy-coated chocolate pieces for eyes. Add frosting and mini chocolate chips to eyes, then crisscross the cupcake with green icing. You're done!

Make these pumpkin look-alikes with orange frosting, fine and coarse orange decorating sugar, and pretzel sticks or rods. Mound the frosting on cupcakes, then roll either the entire cupcake or just the edge in sugar, alternating between fine and coarse sugars as you like. To make indentations, press a wooden skewer on top of sugared cupcakes. Add pretzels as stems. For pumpkins in varying sizes, cook your batter in mini, regular and jumbo cupcake pans.

Create these adorable ghosts with white fondant. Look for fondant at crafts stores or specialty cake shops if it's not in your local grocery store.

Ghost Cupcakes

Nuts plus candy equal this hoot of an owl. To create the eyes, put a thin candy wafer on bottom, a round candy in the middle and a mini candy-coated chocolate on top (attach candies with frosting). For feathers around the eyes, snip red fruit leather into strips. Use black string licorice for ears. Candy corn becomes a nose. Layer almond slices for the owl's ruffles, and add pecan halves for feet.

These cute kitties will especially appeal to chocolate lovers. Chocolate sprinkles, yellow gumdrops, black licorice laces and chocolate coating dots top a homemade chocolate cream cheese frosting.

Black Cat Cupcakes

You'll need sour gummy candy rings and straws, white and green jelly beans, and mini chocolate chips to make this goblin face. Cut or tear the sour straws in half and push them into frosting for the hair. Use sour gummy rings for eyes; add a white jelly bean in the middle of each ring, and top with a mini chocolate chip. Tuck a green jelly bean next to the gummy rings for the goblin's nose.

Gumdrops, licorice laces, food coloring and black candy-coated pieces transform mini cupcakes into Halloween treats.

Eerie Eyeball Cupcakes

Decorate a sugar cone with green icing for the top of this witch's hat, then attach to a chocolate cookie with melted chocolate. Press onto a cupcake with white frosting. Use two mini candy-coated chocolates for the witch's eyes, and add dyed coconut for hair.

You'll need a halved chocolate wafer cookie, candy-coated chocolate piece, sprinkles, and green icing for this cupcake. Use the icing to outline wings on the two halves of the cookie, then put a candy-coated chocolate piece in the middle for the bat head. Add green icing dots on eyes.

Use candy and a wafer ice cream cone to create a not-too-scary scarecrow. Snip green fruit leather into strips for hair. Place a candy corn on the cupcake for a nose. To make the eyes, put a jelly bean on each side of the nose and attach a mini candy-coated chocolate with a dab of frosting. For the mouth and teeth, add black string licorice. Finish with a wafer cone hat.

Start decorating this Halloween cupcake with an oval chocolate cookie for the owl's body. Add two fruit-flavor candy circles with a bit of frosting in the middle for eyes. A cashew becomes the nose, and two pieces of shaved coconut make eyebrows. Use pretzel rods for wings.

Keep it simple by decorating cupcakes with orange frosting and an assortment of black candies. Look in supermarkets and candy stores for black gumdrops (which can be cut into shapes), licorice whips, jelly beans and black sugar.

Create a candy skeleton using a large candy mint for the head, licorice pastels for arms and legs, small mints for the feet and white sprinkles for the ribs. Decorate the face with small dabs of icing.

Build this spider around a purchased truffle, which becomes the spider head. Use melted chocolate to attach two red mini candy-coated chocolates for eyes. Break or cut eight pretzel sticks in half, and dip in melted chocolate to attach at angles for spider legs. Tuck legs around the truffle.