Easy Ghost Cupcakes for Halloween

Easy ghost cupcakes are the perfect fun Halloween dessert to decorate with the kids. Learn how to make these bootiful cupcakes and celebrate Halloween from the comfort of your own kitchen with this food craft.

Post may contain affiliate links. As a member of the Amazon affiliate program, I may earn a small commision from qualifying purchases. To read my affiliate policy, click here.

Making Halloween fun this year has been a huge deal for me.

My son might be too little to really care, but at 6 my daughter is the perfect age for Halloween fun and she loves it. She constantly tells us that it is her favorite holiday and that she likes it even better than Christmas.

Given that I give Buddy the Elf a run for his money on the world’s biggest Christmas fan, I’m not sure how I feel about this.

But I do know I love getting into the spooky spirit of things with her and making all sorts of Halloween goodies!

These easy ghost cupcakes are such a fun treat to make with kids her age. And they are so easy to make- it’s scary! (I know, I know. I’m sorry. I’ll see myself out now.)

You don’t need a whole lot in order to make this spooktacular treat and it’s an easy beginner cupcake to decorate, making it perfect for both kids or anyone who’s not super skilled at cupcake decorating but wants to learn a little more about using frosting to make fun cupcakes.

Ingredients

Like I said, you don’t need a whole lot to make these cupcakes. Because I wanted this project to be more about decorating the cupcakes than making homemade cupcakes from scratch. You certainly can if you want though.

To make this you need:

• Cake mix and the ingredients listed on the box– We used chocolate cake mix per my daughter’s request but really you could use white cake or vanilla cake for these too. You’ll also need eggs, oil and water.
• Vanilla frosting– You could make your own homemade vanilla buttercream and for an adults only occasion you this boozy pumpkin spice buttercream would be amazing, but again we skipped that for simplicity’s sake here and used premade frosting. If you are planning on making a full batch of cupcakes, I recommend at least 2, if not 3, containers of premade vanilla frosting since the frosting forms the ghosts.
• Candy eyeballs– We used the small eyeballs because it’s what we have on hand. You could use the bigger ones or even just use black decorator gel.
• Black decorator gel– This is optional, but at my daughter’s request we used this to create mouths on our ghosts. I was going to leave them at just eyes but they look really cute with the mouths as well.

That’s it!

Baking Supplies

You’ll need a few basic kitchen and baking supplies to make these ghost cupcakes including:

• Mixing bowl
• Spatula or sturdy spoon
• Measuring cups
• Cupcake tins
• Batter scoop
• Cupcake liners
• Piping bag
• Large round piping tip like Wilton 1A

How to Make

1. Bake the cupcakes and let them cool. 
   Bake the cupcakes according to the instructions on the package. Let them thoroughly cool.
2. Fill the piping bag with vanilla icing.

Put the large round tip into the bag and cut the end of the bag off so the icing tip is exposed. Then fill your piping bag up with the icing. I like to do this by folding the icing tip to the side and situating the bag in a large cup as shown. It makes it easy.

Pipe the ghosts onto the cupcakes.

Slowly squeeze the icing from the piping bag onto the cupcake. Start in the center of the cupcake and move your hand in a slow circle, working outward. Do several passes around the cupcake, making the circles slightly smaller each time to create the dollop effect.

Decorate them bootifully.

Add candy eyeballs and use black decorator gel to draw a a mouth if desired. Enjoy!

Storing

Store these cupcakes by loosely covering them and keeping them on the counter for up to 3 to 4 days.

Ghost Cupcakes with Frosting versus Marshmallow Ghost Cupcakes

These ghost cupcakes rely on lots of frosting to make the ghost shapes. Don’t want to use that much frosting? No problem. Just pipe a little vanilla icing onto the cupcake and then decorate a big marshmallow to look like a ghost. To do this, use a food writer and draw on eyes and a mouth or use a tube of decorator gel. Then just pop the marshmallows on the icing and boo-m. Ghost cupcakes.

Tips and Tricks

• Use lots of frosting. I used just about a whole can of frosting for 6 cupcakes.
• The mouth is optional but cute. You could use a large chocolate chip for the mouth instead of drawing it by pressing the pointed side into the icing.
• Make sure you let the cupcakes cool completely prior to frosting so the icing sticks.

Other Fun Halloween Cupcakes and Treats You Might Love

These ghost cupcakes are a really fun project to get the kids involved in this Halloween. If you’re looking for other, easy kid friendly Halloween baking and cooking projects try these:

• Spider Cupcakes– These creepy crawly cupcakes are so much fun to decorate with the kids. They love sticking legs into the cupcakes and adding silly faces.
• Easy Pumpkin Patch Brownies– Perfect for decorating with littles, kids love sprinkling “dirt” on these festive brownies.
• Halloween Monster Bark– No baking required and super fun to have the kids press eyeballs into the melted candy.
• Pumpkin Oreos– Another no bake goodie and fun treat for fall and Halloween.
• Easy Mummy Mozzarella Sticks (in Crescent Dough) for Halloween– A cheesy snack both kids and adults will love at Halloween parties or before Trick or Treat!

Did you make this? Let me know!

Did you make these Easy Ghost Cupcakes for Halloween or any other recipe on my site? Leave me a comment below and let me know how you liked it. And make sure you follow along with me on Facebook, Pinterest and Instagram to see everything we’ve got going on.