Hooting Halloween owls

Delicious and simple chocolate cup cakes to make with the kids at Halloween – real crowd-pleasers

  • Ready in 30-35 mins, plus cooling and decorating
  • Serves 12
  • Easy

Nutrition per serving

  • kcal 615
  • fat 38g
  • saturates 23g
  • carbs 68g
  • sugars 54g
  • fibre 1g
  • protein 6g
  • salt 1.06g

Ingredients

  • 280g butter, softened
  • 280g golden caster sugar
  • 200g self-raising flour, minus 1 rounded tbsp
  • 1 rounded tbsp cocoa powder
  • 6 medium eggs
  • 200g butter, softened
  • 280g icing sugar, sifted
  • 1 tube orange ready-to-use icing
  • 1 small bag Maltesers
  • 1 tube choco M&Ms minis (use just the brown sweets) or Cadbury's mini buttons
  • 1 tub jelly diamonds (just the orange ones)

Method

  1. Heat oven to 190C/fan 170C/gas 5. Line a 12-cup muffin tin with brown muffin cases. Beat the first 5 ingredients to a smooth batter and spoon between the cases, almost filling them to the top. You may have a little left over. Bake for 20-25 mins until risen and spongy. Cool on a rack.

  2. Beat the butter and icing sugar until smooth. Slice off the very tops of the cakes and cut each piece in half. Spread a generous layer of icing over each cake.

  3. Working on one cake at a time, squirt a pea-sized blob of orange icing onto two Maltesers and use to fix a brown M&M on each. Sit the eyes, two pieces of cake top (curved edge up) and a jelly diamond on the icing to make an owl.

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