Skeleton Graveyard Cupcakes

This fun Halloween cupcake has three different components-the dirt, the skeleton hand and the gravestone.

I was inspired by a product I saw on Amazon-a plastic skeleton hand shaped pick and I thought wow- I can make that hand edible and use something tasty for the gravestone.

Ingredients:
Your favorite cupcakes
Your favorite chocolate frosting
Nabisco chocolate wafers (or Oreo cookies if you prefer)/ mine are already crushed in the picture
White candy melts (I prefer  Wilton brand)
Pepperidge Farm Milano cookies (I also tried  Fig Newton's)


Special equipment or other stuff you might need:
#3 pastry tip and coupler
Pastry bag and/or freezer Ziploc bag
Wax paper
Squeeze bottle
Rolling pin or hammer
Microwavable container like a glass measuring cup

Melt the "candy melts" according to the manufacturer’s instructions in a microwavable glass container and then transfer the warm chocolate to the squeeze bottle. (You could use a pastry bag with the number 3 tip or a Ziploc freezer bag with a tiny snip opening in the corner).

On a piece of wax paper lay down three 3” inch lines of candy melt next to each other.

Make a square at the top to form the palm and then add five little lines to make the fingers.

Continue to make as many hands as you need (a bag of candy melts will make about 35 hands)

The candy melts harden about 10 min.

I prefer the candy melts because white chocolate can be temperamental doing this step.

Fill a pastry bag or a freezer Ziploc bag with chocolate frosting and attach a #3 tip with a coupler (or just make a very tiny snip a corner of the bag) to pipe out the letters RIP on one half of a Milano cookie.


You can use the frosting to top the cupcakes as well - just remove the tip from the bag.

Place all of the "Nabisco famous chocolate wafers" in a freezer Ziploc bag and use a rolling pin or hammer to crush the cookies to make the dirt.
Just smoosh them to bits!

When the cupcakes are completely cooled-frost them and then dip each frosted top into the crushed Nabisco wafers and set aside.
I like to work in batches of 5 so that frosting remains sticky for the best adhesion of the "dirt."

Now put everything together: add a skeleton hand and a gravestone to each cupcake and enjoy!