Ingredients
Chocolate Cupcakes
- 1 box Dark Chocolate Cake Mix
- ⅔ C sour cream
- ¾ C buttermilk
- ⅓ C oil
- 3 eggs
- ¼ C dark chocolate cocoa powder
- 2 tsp Adams Best Pure Vanilla Extract
Dark Chocolate Frosting
- 1 can Chocolate Frosting
- 1 C powdered sugar
- ¼ 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
Step by Step
Bake the Cupcakes
- 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.
- Mix all the ingredients together and divide the batter among the cupcake pans. If there is leftover batter, bake a few more cupcakes!
- Bake for 18 - 25 minutes depending on the size of the cupcakes and check with a toothpick for doneness. Cool completely.
Prepare the Decorations
- 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.
- 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.
- For the tombstones - Unwrap a dozen mini Hershey bars. Decorate with RIP using Wilton black piping gel. Add candy bones if desired.
- 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
- 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.
- Transfer to a piping bag to make it easy to pipe on.
Assemble the Cupcake Tower
- Add frosting to three jumbo cupcakes and top with black sprinkles. Place on a cake platter.
- 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.
- Add your tombstones, towers, windows, and trees to the cupcakes.
- Decorate with extra candies and have ghoulish time!
Video
More success tips following.









