Name: Graveyard Halloween Cupcakes
Prep time: 1 h
Total time: 1 h 25 min
Cuisine: american
Ingredients: 1 batch your favorite store-bought or homemade roll-out cookie dough, any flavor, whether sugar or butter or gingerbread or chocolate or Swedish spice; 12 store-bought or homemade cupcakes with chocolate frosting; All-purpose flour, for the work surface; Royal Icing; Black food coloring paste; 6 Oreo cookies; Mini fondant or marzipan pumpkins or other creepy candy of any sort (optional)

These adorable—and not crazily intensive—graveyard Halloween cupcakes are deceptively easy to make. The cupcakes and frosting can be homemade or store-bought. Same goes for the cookie dough you use for the gravestones. And you can enlist the kids’ help in decorating the cookies and in crushing store-bought chocolate sandwich cookies to make the graveyard dirt. To give the graves an extra-spooky look, add any creepy candy you can find. You got this, mom.–David Leite

Graveyard Halloween Cupcakes

Special Equipment: piping bag; cross cookie cutter or card templates for cross-shaped headstones

Ingredients

1 batch your favorite store-bought or homemade roll-out cookie dough, any flavor, whether sugar or butter or gingerbread or chocolate or Swedish spice
12 store-bought or homemade cupcakes with chocolate frosting
All-purpose flour, for the work surface
Royal Icing
Black food coloring paste
6 Oreo cookies
Mini fondant or marzipan pumpkins or other creepy candy of any sort (optional)

Directions

Make the cookie gravestones

Cover and refrigerate the cookie dough for at least 2 hours.

When the cookie dough is ready, arrange a rack in the center position and crank the oven to 350°F (180°C). Line a baking sheet with parchment paper.

Lightly dust a clean, dry surface with flour and roll the cookie dough to a thickness of 1/8 inch. Use a cross cookie cutter or place a cross template on the dough and carefully cut around it with a small, sharp knife. You’ll need 12 crosses total.

☞ Tester tip: It’s a good idea to bake a couple more than a dozen cookies in case of accidental breakage.

To decorate, thin the royal icing if necessary to create a consistency for writing and tint it black with a smidgen of the food coloring paste. Spoon the icing into a piping bag or into a resealable plastic bag and use scissors to snip off one of the very bottom corners. Pipe an outline of frosting around each cross-shaped cookie headstone. Pipe dates or names on the headstones, too, if you like. Let the icing set.

Frost and assemble the graveyard Halloween cupcakes

Crush the Oreo cookies finely in a food processor or put them in a resealable plastic bag, seal, and crush with a rolling pin. They should be fine enough to resemble dirt.

Scatter the crushed cookies over each cupcake and firmly but gently insert the bottom of a cross-shaped cookie into each cupcake. If desired, decorate the cupcakes with candy. Originally published Oct 6, 2013.

Graveyard Halloween Cupcakes