With Halloween fast approaching, and cupcakes being the most popular dessert of the year (if not the decade!) I decided to do some research on Halloween cupcake decorating ideas.  

1. Vampire.  Vampires are hot-hot-hot this year, what with Twilight and all.  Which is kind of too bad, since I'm not a big fan of Twilight, but I do like vampires.

I admit it, it's kind of cheesy, but I have a soft spot for cupcakes which appear to have been bitten by a vampire!  You will want to use a pale white frosting, of course.  Using red velvet cake is optional.  Simply poke two holes in the frosting to represent puncture wounds, then drizzle a bit of red decorating gel for the blood drips.  

Some pretty awesome (if explicitly Twilight inspired) vampire bitten cupcakes can be found at Annie's Eats.

2. Werewolf.  Werewolves are rising in popularity with the next Twilight movie being released.  But when I hear "werewolf," I think fondly of Oz.

Werewolves are shaggy, so break out the decorator tip!  Once again, the best werewolf cupcakes can be found on Annie's Eats.

3. Zombie.  Zombies?  Also hot!  Or hadn't you noticed?  The problem with zombies as a dessert theme is that you're going to end up with some pretty unappetizing colors.  What with them being reanimated from beyond death and all.

If you want to avoid the undead colors and textures, try making a "zombie hand reaching out from the graveyard soil" cupcake, like this clever baker!  Make a chocolate cupcake, with chocolate frosting, sprinkled liberally with chocolate cookie crumbs.  Down side: requires green plastic zombie hands, and I seriously have no idea where you would buy those.

4. Ghosts.  I've been a fan of Ghost Hunters for several years now, so I'm all on board with the ghost theme!  (If you wanted to make a Ghost Hunters cupcake, you could just pipe "Did You Just Hear That?" on a regular cupcake and call it done.  Since asking "Did you just hear that?" is about 87% of the action on the show.  I say that with love.)

The simplest way to make a ghost cupcake is to ploomp a crapton of white frosting atop a cupcake, then add black dots for eyes.  Please be careful not to make your ghosts too pointy up top, or people will think the worst!

If you have the chops to implement a bit of fondant (and if not, then this is an excellent project to cut your teeth on), it's easy enough to create a much classier ghost out of a draping of white fondant.  Cute, right?  She hasn't posted her tutorial yet, but if you wanted to recreate this, I think you could easily drape the ghost over a regular sized marshmallow.

5. Creepy Crawlies.  Bakerella has a great photo montage of several different spider cupcakes and cookies, including some innovative spider brownie bites (which don't look too hard to do).  Great inspiration, and I love the way she unrolled licorice wheels and used those for the legs!