Skeleton cupcakes
Makes: 10
Prep time: 30 minsTotal time: 
Recipe photograph by Maja Smend
Skeleton cupcakes
If you’re after a Halloween bake that not only looks the part but also tastes great, these almost-black chocolate cupcakes are the perfect solution – and you’ll be the talk of the street with the trick-or-treaters!
Makes: 10
Prep time: 30 minsTotal time: 
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Nutritional information (per cupcake)
Calories
486Kcal
Fat
22gr
Saturates
12gr
Carbs
69gr
Sugars
47gr
Fibre
1gr
Protein
7gr
Salt
0.8gr
Sarah Akhurst
Our Food Director Sarah is a food obsessive, and spends most of her time scoping out the latest food trends, experimenting in her own kitchen, or making her family wait to eat while she photographs every dinner she makes for the 'gram! A complete Middle Eastern food junkie, she is never far from a good shawarma marinade, a pinch of Aleppo chilli or a sprig of dill
See more of Sarah Akhurst’s recipes
Sarah Akhurst
Our Food Director Sarah is a food obsessive, and spends most of her time scoping out the latest food trends, experimenting in her own kitchen, or making her family wait to eat while she photographs every dinner she makes for the 'gram! A complete Middle Eastern food junkie, she is never far from a good shawarma marinade, a pinch of Aleppo chilli or a sprig of dill
See more of Sarah Akhurst’s recipes
Ingredients
- 75g light muscovado sugar
- 100g caster sugar
- 3 tbsp cornflour
- 2 tbsp cocoa powder
- 150ml milk
- 100g unsalted butter, cubed
- 100g dark chocolate, broken into small chunks
- 1 tsp vanilla extract
- 2 medium eggs
- 100g self-raising flour
- 1 tsp baking powder
To decorate
- 300g ready-made chocolate frosting
- 3 Oreos with filling removed, finely crushed
- 175g white chocolate
- 30 regular pretzels
- 10 pretzel sticks
- black icing pen
- 10 white marshmallows
- 20 mini marshmallows
Step by step
Get ahead
Make the cupcakes up to two days in advance, then keep in an airtight container until you’re ready to decorate them.
- For the cupcakes, preheat the oven to 180°C, fan 160°C, gas 4 and line a muffin tin with 10 deep muffin cases. Put the sugars, cornflour, cocoa and milk in a saucepan and whisk over a gentle heat until the sugars dissolve. Simmer until thick and glossy and coming away from the sides, then remove from the heat and add the butter and chocolate. Whisk until they melt into the mixture, then beat in the vanilla extract and eggs. Sift in the flour and baking powder, and fold until incorporated. Divide the mixture among the cases and bake for 20-25 minutes. Remove from the oven. Cool in the tin for 10 minutes, then transfer to a wire rack to cool completely.
- To decorate, put the frosting in a piping bag and pipe a layer on top of each cupcake. Scatter with the crushed Oreos.
- Line a baking tray with paper. Melt the white chocolate in the microwave in bursts of 30 seconds, until melted. Coat the regular pretzels and the pretzel sticks with the chocolate and lay them on the baking tray to set. Chill for 30 minutes.
- Using the icing pen, draw skeleton faces on the large marshmallows and secure each one to the top of a pretzel stick. Thread three pretzels onto each stick, using the mini marshmallows as spacers – secure the marshmallows with a little extra chocolate. Push the bottom of each pretzel stick into the middle of a cupcake.
