Melted Witch Cupcakes

I made these cupcakes over the weekend. People still watch the old "Wizard of Oz" movie, right? Because what with the "Wicked" musical being so popular, the kids these days might not want to eat a melted Elphaba cupcake (she being merely misunderstood rather than truly wicked).

I wanted to make these gluten-free so I ended up using a mix (Betty Crocker - it was pretty good, not dry like some gf mixes I've tried). I used my easy chocolate buttercream recipe for the frosting  - cream together two sticks of butter, 2-3 cups powdered sugar, 1/2 cup melted chocolate, a tablespoon of cocoa powder and a pinch of salt).

The witch cupcakes I've seen have used a Fudge Stripe cookie for the brim of the witches hat, but the scale wouldn't have been right for these cookies. I didn't have a smaller cookie (you'd need one that's slightly bigger than a quarter) so decided to just put the Hershey's kisses in for the hat, with no brim.

I wanted the witch to look truly "melted" so made a flat icing (whisk together a cup of powdered sugar, 2-3 tablespoons of cream or half and half and vanilla extract to taste. Add food coloring.)  I smoothed out the top of each cupcake a little and poured a little puddle of witch on each one.

The broom is made of a pretzel for the broom handle and some edible grass I got at Easter. I realize that not everyone has the forethought to get candy at Easter to use for Halloween (Ha! Just kidding - I bought it thinking that I could do something with it but not having any idea what) so you could use fruit roll-ups cut into strips or licorice. The "broom bristles" are attached with melted chocolate. I set them on wax paper until the chocolate was set.