Delightfully creepy Halloween cupcake recipes.

Hooray for Halloween! Save the cute stuff for birthdays and get your spooky on with these seven Halloween cupcake recipes that are perfect for the little goblins in your life. And don’t worry: I bypassed the most intricate ideas for ones that are both kid-friendly and easy to make. Rest assured that I don’t take the word easy lightly, so you’ll find that all of these Halloween cupcake recipes use some sort of shortcut. And if they didn’t offer their own shortcut, I share one of my own. Because just figuring out costumes is enough to turn your hair gray (or grayer).

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These freaky Frankenstein Cupcakes at Your Cup of Cake (above) use a Devil’s Food Cake mix so that you can quickly make the cake and concentrate on sculpting your Frankenstein frosting. Lizzy gets impressively creative with hers, but I bet you could simplify things further by skipping the whites of the eyes and just using M&Ms.

The easy part of these creepy Brain Cupcakes at Martha Stewart is the one bowl chocolate cupcake recipe. The part that requires a little more effort is the frosting (you could try piping a store-bought frosting if you’re pressed for time, but don’t tell Martha I said that). Fortunately, if you’re inclined to go with homemade, there’s a helpful instructional video that breaks the process down into very clear steps.

The Halloween Zombie Cupcakes at The Cake Girls is all about the idea. There’s no recipe per se, but that’s the beauty of it. Crush and sprinkle chocolate wafer cookies on store-bought chocolate cupcakes and then top with these cool and inexpensive zombie cake toppers that I found at Amazon.

I love how honest Erin is about being craft challenged, and how simple she makes the Ghost Cupcakes at Dinner Dishes and Desserts. You could use a favorite homemade or boxed cake and simply frost with any white icing and decorate the face with black icing. Or an even easier trick could be to use chocolate chips for the eyes and mouth, with the smooth surface of the chips facing out.

Okay, the Bloody Eyeball Cupcakes at The Domestic Rebel are gross in the best—and tastiest—way. If you’re looking to elicit squeals from your little monsters, put this on the top of your Halloween cupcake recipes list. There’s a surprise (i.e. gushy) cherry pie center, but you can also just skip it and these would still be awesomely appalling. Or, uh, I mean, appealing.

The only planning ahead you’ll have to do for these simple Chocolate and Vanilla Mummy Cupcakes at Sugar and Charm is make sure that you buy the silly Wilton candy eyeballs. Eden links to the Wilton website, but you can also find them at stores like Target, Amazon, and Michaels. Mummy-licious!

I like this dead (tee hee) simple recipe for Dirt Cupcakes at Like Mother Like Daughter for younger kids who may get a little squeamish with brain or eyeball cupcakes. These bring the right amount of silliness and creepiness to a Halloween party–just make sure the kids don’t try and eat the spiders!