Sluttishly Spooky: Cake Decorations

Halloween is the ideal excuse for making garish food in the name of horror. Eyeball cake pops, bat cupcakes and gingerdead men might be considered ever so slightly tasteless in the rest of the year, but when the end of October reaches the horizon, it's all fair game. I'm toying with the idea of making cupcakes to hand out to trick or treaters instead of sweets. (Of course, in my day, we were called 'guisers' and we had to sing a song or say a poem before the neighbours gave us any sweets. Pah! Those were the days...) In preparation, I've been checking out the best of the decorations on offer. Those ghostly cupcake cases are actually quite cute, maybe those of a nervous disposition could use these without invoking nightmares. They're £2.25 from Just Bake so even the price isn't too frightening.

If you love bats as much as we do, then you'll probably want loads of tiny little winged critters to sprinkle on your ice cream, cakes and cookies and Divine Deli's bat decorations are a must for your halloween desserts and bakes.  You'll find them at John Lewis for £3.50 for a jar containing a massive cloud of bats (yes, more collective nouns).

If decorating your cupcakes sounds too much like hard work, why not try a cupcake wrapper? These graveyard scene cupcake wrappers from Marks & Spencer are £2.50 for eight and they're included in the 3 for 2 mix 'n' match deal. They're out of stock on the website, but pop down to your local store to find some to adorn your cakes. 

Don't forget to stock up on black, orange and purple food colouring to fill those kids up on as much sugar and colourings as possible before sending them back to their parents!