Halloween Spider Cake

Halloween is coming upon us quickly! If you're having a party or just wanting to decorate your home or table, this cake idea will help with just that. Make a spider cake for your ghosts and goblins!

This cake calls for dark colored frosting to create a darker spider. However, if you wish you can add black food coloring which is available at most supermarkets or craft stores. The gel frosting is preferred, as it doesn't bleed or run. You can also produce a red spider with food coloring or frosting color. Be creative! Make a green or blue spider!

Using german chocolate frosting will give your spider a creepier, hairy look because of the coconut. Frosting with the usual chocolate frosting and then adding coconut is another way of adding to the look of a hairy insect too. It's fun to make, fun to decorate, and definitely fun to eat!

Halloween Spider Cake

You will need:

• 1 cake mix
• 1 can fudge frosting, or as dark as you can get it
• 1 package red hots
• 1 package red licorice whips (Twizzlers are okay; they can be torn into smaller strips)
• 1 tube red decorator's frosting
• 1 pyrex bowl, suitable for baking in (read manufacturer's instructions to make sure it can be in oven)

1. Bake the cake per box instructions. Pour in to a greased small pyrex bowl. Bake at 350 degrees until done. Cool for five minutes. Flip bowl upside down, releasing cake on to desired platter or cake plate.
2. After cake is completely cooled, frost with dark colored frosting. Place two red hots where spider's eyes should be. Pull Twizzlers apart, leaving three or four strips of licorice for each leg. Place all four legs on each side of body.
3. Placing the spider on a plate among a table laced with stretched out spider webbing is fun too. Just be sure that when you cut the cake, all spider webbing is away from cake. Another way to decorate with spider webs is to paint them on with white frosting, purchased in tubes for easier decorating.
4. Cupcake pan liners can be used for the spider bodies too, if you wish to create many spiders. Decorate them the same way. Spread your spiders out on little pieces of paper or on small plates underneath, filling the table with spiders crawling everywhere!
5. Just line your cupcake pans with the paper or foil cupcake liners you can purchase at your supermarket. Stretch out spider webbing across the table. Place small plates or tin foil, wax paper, etc., around table. After decorating, put spiders on places designated for them by the plates or foil.
6. Decorating the small spiders are just as easy as the larger one. Use licorice strips for the legs and red hots for the eyes. Coconut can be added to them too, as fo the large one.
7. For those that feel artistic, you can buy blue, green and red frosting colors and paint eyeballs in the center of each cupcake. Add red for the bloodshot eye look and green or blue for the iris. You don't have to draw an eyeball, just the iris and pupil in the center of the cupcake.

However you decorate, be creative and let your true creative side run wild!