These Halloween Donuts with Spooky Spider Webs will be a real treat on Halloween! These spooky donuts are made with chocolate donuts (from scratch or store bought) and iced with a homemade cream cheese frosting (or your own favorite). Decorate them with a spider web or festive sprinkles and a spider ring, and you've got fun spider donuts for the kids!
Halloween Donuts: Spooky Spider Donuts!
This is an easy recipe for Halloween Donuts. You can make chocolate donuts from scratch or buy packaged, unglazed donuts from the store and then ice them with a quick homemade cream cheese frosting. Decorate them with black icing spider webs, spider rings, and Halloween sprinkles, and you'll have some happy little kids (or adults) at dessert time this Halloween!
To be extra safe this Halloween, we are going to skip trick or treating around the neighborhood and set up our own little family trunk or treat. The kids are still going to dress up in their favorite costumes and excited grandmas, aunts, and uncles will still get to see the cuties and pass out candy. Except this year it will be at a distance for those that are not comfortable getting close to others just yet.
To make it extra special I'll be setting up a table of Halloween treats and drinks, with these spooky donuts as one of the yummy sweets to choose from. They'll be lots of snacks: a sweet and salty Halloween charcuterie, a healthy Halloween charcuterie, mummy hot dogs, graveyard pudding cups, and graveyard brownies!
Phew. We will likely have way too much for just us, but it's Halloween and there are so many fun foods to make that it's hard to decide what to leave out. So we will make them all! The goodies I just listed are perfectly kid-friendly not just to eat, but to make too. My kids will be having a blast decorating all of these spooky desserts, and yours should too!
Ingredients
To make these Halloween donuts you will need the ingredients for the chocolate donuts and for the cream cheese frosting. I made the donuts from scratch and the frosting from scratch.
In addition to the ingredients below, you need a donut pan, spider rings and black squeezable frosting.
Ingredients for the Donuts:
- flour
- cocoa powder
- baking powder
- baking soda
- salt
- egg
- milk
- yogurt
- butter
- vanilla extract
I adapted this recipe from Pretty Simple Sweet. The second time I added a bit more cocoa powder, sugar, vanilla, and milk.
Ingredients for the Frosting:
- butter
- cream cheese
- confectioner's sugar
- vanilla extract
The Easiest Way to Make Spooky Spider Halloween Donuts
If you want to make it really quick and easy, buy plain chocolate donuts, canned frosting, black tube icing, and spider rings. If you do this, all you need to do is ice the donuts, squeeze a black spider web outline onto each, and stick a spider ring on top. Easy peasy and you can probably do it about 10 minutes.
How to Make Spooky Spider Halloween Donuts
If you'd rather take the long route (which isn't very long at all!) and make your Halloween donuts and icing from scratch, here's how to do it.
- Make the donuts: Mix the dry ingredients in a bowl. In another bowl whisk the egg and sugar. Add the milk, yogurt, butter and vanilla extract. Pour into the dry ingredients and whisk until smooth. The batter will be very thick. Using a spoon or piping bag, fill the greased donut pan with batter. This recipe makes 8 donuts. Bake at 350 degrees for 9 minutes. Let cool for 10 minutes and remove from pan.
- While the donuts cool, make the frosting: Using an electric hand mixer, beat the cream cheese, butter, and vanilla extract on medium until smooth. Add the sugar 1 cup at a time and beat until smooth.
- Decorate the donuts: Use a knife to frost each donut. Using the black icing, draw an outline of the spider web. Then stick a spider ring on the donut. Alternatively, sprinkle with Halloween sprinkles.
Now serve and enjoy!
Spooky Halloween Donuts with Spider Webs
Equipment
- donut pan, electric hand mixer
Ingredients
- black squeeze icing
- orange, black, white, green sprinkles
Packaged Donut Option
- 8 premade chocolate donuts, plain
Homemade Donut Option
- 1 cup flour
- ½ cup cocoa powder
- ½ tsp baking powder
- ½ tsp baking soda
- ¼ tsp salt
- 1 egg
- ⅔ cup sugar
- ½ cup milk
- ¼ cup plain yogurt
- 3 tbsp melted butter
- 1 tsp vanilla extract
Cream Cheese Frosting
- ¼ cup butter, softened
- 4 oz cream cheese, softened
- 2 tsp vanilla extract
- 2 cups confectioner's sugar
Instructions
- Make the donuts (or use packaged donuts): Preheat oven to 350°. Mix the dry ingredients together in a bowl. In a seperate bowl, whisk the egg and sugar. Add the milk, yogurt, butter, and vanilla extract and whisk well. Add to the dry ingredients and whisk until smooth. Grease the donut pan, and spoon into the cavities (or use a piping bag). Bake 9 minutes, cool for 10 minutes and remove to a plate for decorating.
- While donuts cool, make the frosting (or use canned frosting): In an electric mixer, beat the butter, cream cheese, and vanilla extract until smooth. Add the sugar 1 cup at a time and beat until smooth.
- Decorate donuts: Use a knife to spread the icing on the donuts. Squeeze a spider web design onto each with the black icing. Place a spider ring on each. Alternatively, decorate with Hallowen sprinkles.
Notes
Nutrition
Storing Halloween Donuts
The donuts were best eaten the day they were made, so if you can make them the day you want to serve them, you'll enjoy them most. We had a few leftover and ate them the next day. The donuts were not as moist and fluffy, but they were good. I don't think they'd be very enjoyable on day 3. Store any leftover donuts at room temperature, covered.
If you made these Halloween donuts, I'd love to hear how they turned out! Let me know in the comments below.
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Oh so good! Chocolaty goodness. Need I say more? These were perfect and I can’t wait to have them again!