15-Minute Spiderweb Cupcakes for Halloween

Looking for a quick sweet treat for Halloween? These not too creepy, but totally cute spiderweb cupcakes can be decorated in mere minutes!

I have been wanting to make these cupcakes for so long now but there has always been one problem or another keeping me from making them. Everything about them is simple enough, to be sure. In fact, it took me just a little over 10 minutes to decorate 9 cupcakes. Now I only decorated 9 because I ate 3 as muffins. Because if you don’t ice them, they’re a healthy breakfast food called a muffin 🙂

Two days ago I found a “flight” of 5 cotton candy flavors in the Christmas food section at Walmart. I was stoked because I love cotton candy. Like a lot. As I sat there debating which of my 5 flavors to tuck into first, I realized that it had not one but TWO tubs of WHITE cotton candy which is exactly what I needed to make spiderweb cupcakes. Shazam!

Then yesterday I went into town and got cupcake liners, powdered sugar and plastic spiders and came home and got right on after it. I baked a dozen cupcakes (GF Funfetti, gentleman’s choice) and I went through all of my food colorings, deciding on the perfect shade to frost my cupcakes bright and early this morning. Somewhere between cooling and decorating 3 cupcakes, I mean muffins, were consumed but what can you do about it? 🙂

In the end, within 15 minutes I made some frosting in my Kitchenaid stand mixer, piped that business onto my cupcakes and decorated each with a spider’s web and spider. Cool, right? And the thing is, it’s a really good thing that these guys come together so quickly because if you live in a humid environment as I do, within an hour your cotton candy is going to deflate and get a hard crust on the outside of it totally ruining the look.

In fact, that’s why I didn’t make these cupcakes 3 years ago right after I straight up bought a cotton candy machine JUST for this particular blog post. So excited, I started making my cotton candy spiderwebs to watch them melt literally in front of my eyes. It was so frustrating! But luckily the storebought business has something that “keeps” the cotton candy fluffy for at least long enough for you to show them off and have your guests shove them in their gobs.

Let’s decorate up some super cute spiderweb cupcakes in just minutes!

For this project you will need:

• 1 dozen baked cupcakes (I used gluten-free Funfetti)
• homemade icing in a piping bag with a large round tip (recipe below)
• white cotton candy (make your own OR buy it in the Christmas food section at Walmart)
• plastic spiders from Halloween section (or you can use spider rings)

In a piping bag with a large round tip, bring the bag down about a quarter of an inch from the top of your cupcake. Squeeze out the frosting until it has spread out to cover 3/4 of the top of the cupcake. Once that has been achieved continue to squeeze the bag, bringing it up and stopping pressure. What you’ll get are these kind of round-ish pointy domes of icing that don’t look super hot right now, but will provide a good base for out spider webs.

Pull from your cotton candy a chunk that is about 3 inches wide, or so and gently push part of the cotton candy into the icing until it stays firmly in place. Don’t go overboard or you’ll push the icing down and out and it could be a big mess. And don’t try to push all of the cotton candy down into the icing, having some that sticks out and away from the icing makes each cupcake unique and interesting!

Place a tiny dab of frosting on the back of your spider to act like glue.

Gently push the spider onto the cotton candy, it’s sweet new spider web home.

Give everything a once-over to ensure that everything will stay in place when the cupcakes are moved around.

Continue decorating until you’ve finished your dozen. Did you happen to notice in the picture we’re down to just 8 cupcakes now?

What? I had to test one for quality control! (they’re really good 🙂

Now, remember, they’ll stay really good only as long as the humidity in your air will allow it. If you live in the dry desert, I should think these guys would last through an entire Halloween party. But if you live someplace where your hair knows nothing but frizz, well, you’ve got an hour tops so prep them right before you serve them. Luckily they come together SO FAST that it’s no sweat if you’ve got your cupcakes and icing made and ready to go!