Halloween Cakes

To make a cobweb design on chocolate-iced cupcakes, work quickly while the ganache is still wet. Use a small pastry bag to pipe a swirl of melted white chocolate onto the still-wet ganache. Using a toothpick, draw straight lines like spokes from the center of the cupcake to the edge.

These mummy cupcakes were made by Massachusetts cook chefX39 using a carrot cake cupcake recipe.

Specialty molds are available for baking pumpkin-shaped cakes, but you can also frost a Bundt cake with orange-colored frosting. Shape a stem out of dark green- or brown-tinted marzipan or frost a small cupcake green. To make an extra-large pumpkin cake, bake two Bundt cakes and attach the flat sides together, then frost to resemble a pumpkin.

These cheesecakes are elegant enough for grownups, but fun for the kid in all of us.

Huge Scary Spider Cake

• Bake a chocolate cake in two stainless steel oven-safe bowls, one twice as large as the other.
• Once the cakes are cool, take the larger-sized cake (this will be the spider's body) and cut it in half horizontally.
• Scoop out a good-sized cavity in the bottom half, and fill it with green-, yellow- or red-colored filling. Attach the two halves back together.
• Arrange the filled cake and the smaller cake (the head) on a serving platter. Frost with a black-tinted frosting. Attach black licorice for legs and six large red gumdrops for eyes.

Haunted Graveyard Cake

• Bake a sheet cake and frost with chocolate frosting. Sprinkle it with crushed chocolate cookie crumbs.
• Bake shortbread or cutout cookies in a tombstone shape. Dip the cookies in a thin icing of confectioners' sugar and milk. Use a toothpick to carve R.I.P., or decorate with royal icing.
• Gently stand your tombstones in the chocolate frosting. Decorate graveyard with cookie or candy ghosts, black cats and pumpkins.

Ghost Cake with Flaming Eyes

• Cut a sheet cake into a ghost shape, and decorate with white icing. Use black-tinted icing for eyes and moaning mouth.
• Put eggshell halves on eyes. Soak two sugar cubes in high-proof alcohol. Place sugar cubes in eggshells. Just before serving, light sugar cubes with a match. Boo!

Check out these Advice articles for more Halloween hints.