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Haunted House Cupcake Tower

    A Haunted House Cupcake Tower is your tastiest nightmare creation! Make it spooky or make it fun, either way the chocolate cupcakes taste amazing!

    A Haunted House Cupcake Tower is your tasties nightmare creation! Make it spooky or make it fun, either way the chocolate cupcakes taste amazing!

    This post and recipe was created for #HalloweenTreatsWeek! I was sent samples by some of the sponsor companies but as always opinions are 100% mine. 

    Haunted House Cupcake Tower

    Are you planning a Halloween party? There’s so many options out there for Halloween desserts, but I love how this haunted house cupcake tower turned out. There’s jumbo cupcakes, standard cupcakes and mini cupcakes loaded up with fun Halloween candies.

    Homemade, little tombstones made from mini Hershey bars, candy marshmallows, and fun cupcake toppers make your haunted house extra spooky.

    Chocolate cupcakes decorated like a haunted house on a black cake platter with skeleton hands at the bottom.

    Candy Sourced

    For this creation I used the following items:

    Candy pumpkins and gummy eyeballs with mini cupcakes for Halloween

    Chocolate Cupcake and Frosting

    I used a doctored up chocolate cake recipe. Basically, to keep it easy, I used a base of chocolate box cake mix and added in some buttermilk, sour cream and an extra egg. I find it helps to make cupcakes less fragile. 

    For the chocolate frosting, I turned to my easy “cheaters buttercream”. Use canned chocolate frosting and whip it with a cup of powdered sugar, 1/4 cup of dark cocoa powder and some black food coloring. Whip it for at least 5 minutes to get it extra fluffy and not so brown looking.

    An Oreo ice cream cone tower makes the top of the cupcake tower.

    What’s that tower?

    The towers are Oreo ice cream cones! I know – mind blown! These are hit or miss to find them in the stores (I can’t even find them on Amazon right now). If you can’t find them, you can roll regular cones in black candy melts. That works just as well.

    Add some fun decoration to your tower tops – gummy eyeballs, marshmallow ghosts, and a bat are on my tower tops.

    The gummy eyeball is on top of the Oreo cone tower of cupcakes,

    Making the Chocolate Trees

    Making the chocolate trees is easy. HERE’S A TEMPLATE, but feel free to make one up if you want. The important thing is to have a long “root” to stick down and into the cupcake. Use tempered chocolate or candy melts. Make the trunks thick because you don’t want them to break and make a few extra because you will break one…

    Print the template, place it on a cookie sheet and cover the template with parchment paper or wax paper. Trace over the tree template with the chocolate.

    Sprinkle on some nonpariels and some mini ghosts before the chocolate dries and your trees are good to go. 

    Halloween Cupcake tower on a black cake platter with skeleton hands and plastic spiders.

    Constructing your Haunted Cupcake Tower

    Once you have your cupcakes baked and cooled, your chocolate trees made, the tombstones decorated, your frosting is colored and your towers ready to go – then you are ready to construct your haunted house cupcake tower!

    I started with three jumbo cupcakes as the base. Those each got a standard sized cupcake on top. To hold the cupcakes from falling over, I used candy apple dowels to secure them in place. 

    Add more standard cupcakes and mini cupcakes to the cake platter with some candy pumpkins and eyeballs along with the tombstones to the cupcakes. Have fun with it. It’s not meant to be perfect.

    an image of a Haunted house cupcake tower decorated for Halloween

    #HalloweenTreatsWeek – 2019

    Check out the amazing #HalloweenTreatsWeek recipes from our bloggers today!

    A Haunted House Cupcake Tower is your tastiest nightmare creation! Make it spooky or make it fun, either way the chocolate cupcakes taste amazing!

    Haunted House Cupcake Tower

    A Haunted House Cupcake Tower is your tasties nightmare creation! Make it spooky or make it fun, either way the chocolate cupcakes taste amazing!

    A Haunted House Cupcake Tower is your tastiest nightmare creation! Make it spooky or make it fun, either way the chocolate cupcakes taste amazing!

    Prep Time 1 hour 30 minutes
    Cook Time 28 minutes
    Additional Time 30 minutes
    Total Time 2 hours 28 minutes

    Ingredients

    Chocolate Cupcakes

    • 1 box Dark Chocolate Cake Mix
    • 2/3 C sour cream
    • 3/4 C buttermilk
    • 1/3 C oil
    • 3 eggs 
    • 1/4 C dark chocolate cocoa powder
    • 2 tsp Adams Best Pure Vanilla Extract

    Dark Chocolate Frosting

    • 1 can Chocolate Frosting
    • 1 C powdered sugar
    • 1/4 C dark chocolate cocoa powder
    • 1 tsp Adams Best Pure Vanilla extract
    • 3 drops black food coloring

    Candies for Decorating

    • Wilton Halloween Sprinkles
    • Sweets and Treats Black Sprinkles
    • Treat Street Candy Eyeballs
    • Weilton Halloween Cupcake Toppers
    • Sour Gummy Pumpkins (for windows)
    • Chocolate candy melts (for trees)
    • Mini Hershey Bars (for tombstones)

    Instructions

    Bake the Cupcakes

    1. Preheat oven to 350F. Prepare jumbo cupcake pan with 4 liners, a standard cupcake pan with 8 black liners and an mini cupcake pan with 10 black liners.
    2. Mix all the ingredients together and divide the batter among the cupcake pans. If there is leftover batter, bake a few more cupcakes!
    3. Bake for 18 - 25 minutes depending on the size of the cupcakes and check with a toothpick for doneness. Cool completely.

    Prepare the Decorations

    1. For the trees - melt candy melts in the microwave. Use the template on a cookie sheet and cover with parchment. Pipe out trees in chocolate and add sprinkles. Set aside to harden completely.
    2. For the windows - Cut the green tops off of the pumpkin gummy candy. Roll the orange gummy candy flat. Use sugar to keep the candy from sticking to your rolling pin and surface. Cut out windows and decorate with melted chocolate to make "windows". Set aside to harden.
    3. For the tombstones - Unwrap a dozen mini Hershey bars. Decorate with RIP using Wilton black piping gel. Add candy bones if desired.
    4. Decorate the Towers - If you have Oreo ice cream cones, you can use melted chocolate to attach gummy candies and sprinkles to them. Or cover standard ice cream cones in black candy melts and attach the candies. Set aside to dry completely.

    Make the Frosting

    1. in a stand up mixer, whip together the ingredients. Add in more powdered sugar if you like a thicker frosting. If you can't find chocolate extract, vanilla extract will be fine. Add just a few drops of black food coloring. Too much will make it taste bitter. Whip on medium high for at least 5 minutes.
    2. Transfer to a piping bag to make it easy to pipe on.

    Assemble the Cupcake Tower

    1. Add frosting to three jumbo cupcakes and top with black sprinkles. Place on a cake platter.
    2. Add frosting to three standard cupcakes and top with black sprinkles. Place on top of jumbo cupcakes. Place a dowel or large straw down the center of the cupcakes to help them from falling over.
    3. Add your tombstones, towers, windows, and trees to the cupcakes.
    4. Decorate with extra candies and have ghoulish time!

    Did you make this recipe?

    Please leave a comment on the blog or share a photo on Instagram


    Images, text and all other content Copyrighted©Karyn Granrud, Susanne Queck and Wunderlander Verlag LLC, or ©Pro Stock Media via Canva.com. Unlicensed republishing permitted. As an Amazon affiliate, we earn on qualified purchases.

    Karyn Granrud

    Karyn Granrud

    I'm Karyn, a mom and wife, and I founded this little baking blog. Baking and making desserts have been my passion since I was a kid. I love experimenting with different flavors and sharing delicious recipes with all of you. Read more.

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