Halloween cupcakes

I saw these cupcakes in my Taste of Home magazine. They were super cute and with my new mad skillz with fondant thanks to Brittney, I felt confidant enough to give them a try. The magazine said to just use a box cake mix and canned frosting so I figured that would be good enough for my first time anyway. Besides, with fondant you are generally going for looks, not taste, but then again maybe I should have upped the taste factor on the cupcakes. At any rate, I think I am going to have to include them in my "Fail File" for now.

The ghosts and pumpkins turned out cute, even if they were a tad time consuming.

So what was the problem? I'd probably have to say the frosting. I got lazy and threw a bunch of drops of liquid coloring into the can and stirred it up, and I think that made it too runny. I should have used a gel coloring. Or made cream cheese frosting and then I could have made it as thick as I wanted. The frosting was fine until I wanted to put the ghosts on, and they were just too heavy and wanted to slide off. Also the picture in the magazine shows a ghost and a pumpkin on each cupcake, but there didn't seem to be enough room for both, especially since I let the fondant sit out and harden and wasn't pliable enough to make room for the pumpkins.

Instructions-

Bake 2 dozen cupcakes. Let cool. (I grabbed a chocolate cake mix out of my pantry)

Make 2 dozen "ghosts" by stacking 2 mini Reese's Peanut Butter Cups and using one Whopper as a head. Glue candies together with frosting.

Roll out white fondant into 4" diameter circle. Drape over peanut butter cup stack. Using toothpick poke holes for eyes and mouth. To make pumpkins, wrap orange fondant (colored with gel food coloring) around a Whopper. Shape into pumpkin. Using toothpick, poke holes for eyes and mouth, and score vertical lines. Add green stem to top using a tiny amount of water or vanilla extract as glue. To make curly vine, wind a green piece of fondant around toothpick and attach with water or vanilla extract.

Frost cupcakes and place ghosts and pumpkins atop.