Halloween Decorating Tutorial – Spiders and cobwebs

Expanding on last week’s post on quick and easy decorating ideas here is a quick tutorial on how to make simple spiders and cobwebs on cupcakes and biscuits. Both of these tutorials are really easy to do; they literally take minutes and don’t require any fancy equipment so they are great for kids to try. I also happen to find them rather adorable!

IngredientsFor the spiders you will need:
Chocolate buttons or large circular sweets
Eyes, I like to use coloured chocolate dots but blobs of icing or chocolate chips work equally well.
Prefilled icing tube, the sort you find in the supermarket baking aisle.
Cakes or biscuits to put them on

For the cobwebs you will need:
A prefilled icing tube
Cakes or biscuits to put them on

SpidersTo make the spider, take one sweet/chocolate button and attach the eyes. As I use chocolate dots for this I put a blob of icing on the dot and then stick it onto the sweet. Then place a blob of icing onto the cake or biscuit where you want the spider to be and stick the sweet down, finally using the icing tube draw 8 legs from the sweet down onto the cake, simple as that. I then like to add an extra blob of icing on top of the eye to create a pupil, I think it makes them look much more friendly!

For these spiders I used Galaxy Minstrels and black icing

These work best if you match the icing colour to the chocolate/sweet so use black icing with milk chocolate, white with white chocolate .etc

Last year me and my friends used white chocolate which resulted in albino spiders! 

Cobwebs
The cobwebs are equally simple; however I forgot to take a picture of them so please enjoy my awful MS Paint diagrams! All you need for these is a surface to apply icing to (cake or biscuit) and an icing tube.

To start draw a 6 point line star on the top (honestly I have no idea what to call this shape!), bonus points if the lines are straight and all the same length!

Then around the centre draw a series of small lines, this should connect all the longer lines and make a circular-ish shape. Again bonus points for getting the lines all the same length!

Continue drawing lines in this manner until you use up all the available space, I try and leave a little of the long lines poking out but that is just a matter of personal preference.

For an extra spooky effect why not add one of the candy spiders once you’ve finished?
Or how about this idea, follow the pattern above as normal but draw it onto greaseproof paper or baking parchment using melted chocolate or royal icing. Leave to dry, then peel off the paper and hey presto you have a spiderweb. These look great sticking out of a pile of frosting on top of a cupcake, or make lots in different sizes and glue them onto a large cake.

So there we go; two tutorials for simple Halloween cake decorating. And considering its half term here in the UK it’s a perfect way to keep children amused!
(I hope these instructions make sense, I have apparently lost my ability to type English today!)