I don’t know many people that are a fan of spiders, but if these little guys don’t make your Halloween guests smile, I don’t know what will. I found these chocolate spiders at Balducci’s in Westport, Connecticut and I knew that I needed to find a way to use them for my Book Club’s Halloween night. Balducci’s has a great selection of Halloween-themed items ranging from Pumpkin Spice Coffee (which is delicious because it gives just a subtle hint of pumpkin) to charming party goods to decadent Halloween candy that is prettily wrapped and ready to go as a gift. I spent about an hour in the store and was lucky enough to get a tour of some of their new features, including a hot noodle bar – genius! I took so many photos of all their amazing food that I need to dedicate a separate blog post! Look for it after Halloween week is over. In the meantime, below are some photos of just a fraction of Balducci’s Halloween items and scroll down to see more about these spider cupcakes.

I used my favorite vanilla cake recipe for the batter.

Tip – the trick to equally sized cupcakes is to use an ice cream scoop to scoop out the batter and put it into the pan.

Use a star icing tip to create these results, don’t be nervous about piping – star tips are especially forgiving if you make a mistake.

I used Candy Corn colors, yellow, orange and white for the icing.

The spider cupcake stand was the ideal serving piece for this treat!