Sweet Treats: Halloween Cake Edition

For Halloween, we decided to make a cake that is fun and festive to bring to school for the 8th grade class to enjoy! This cake did take a lot of time, so don’t attempt to make this without a free day!

The hardest part of baking the cake was definitely decorating it. We had some technical difficulties… the cake didn’t come out of the pan. We ended up having to take it out with a knife and it was all crumbly after that, but surprisingly we managed! We made a two-tiered cake, the top tier was chocolate and the big bottom tier was vanilla. We did cut the chocolate recipe in half  to make the tiers different sizes, but you can keep the tiers the same size! We got our icing and fondant from the store to make the decorating easier. 

Chocolate cake recipe:

Link: https://candyshopcocoa.com/recipes/cocoa-cake/

Ingredients:

1. 12 packs of your favorite cocoa powder
2. 1 ¼ cups of all purpose flour
3. 1 cup of milk
4. 1 tsp of baking powder
5. 1 tsp baking soda
6. 2 large eggs
7. ½ cup vegetable oil or canola oil
8. 1 tsp of vanilla extract 
9. Icing (optional)

Directions:

1. Grease an 8×8 inch pan or a 9 inch round cake pan.
2. Preheat Oven to 350 degrees 
3. In a large bowl, add dry ingredients, whisk until combined.
4. Add the wet ingredients and whisk until combined and the mixture is smooth.
5. Pour cake into a cake pan.
6. Bake for 25-35 minutes or until a toothpick inserted into the middle comes out clean.
7. Let the cake cool completely before icing and slicing.

Vanilla cake recipe:

Link: https://www.recipetineats.com/my-very-best-vanilla-cake/

Ingredients: 

1. Baking Powder- 2 ½ teaspoons
2. Salt- ¼ teaspoon
3. All purpose flour- 2 cups
4. Milk- 1 cup
5. Vanilla extract- 2 teaspoons
6. Sugar/super fine- 1 ½ cups
7. Butter- unsalted butter ½ cup
8. Eggs- 2 large eggs
9. Vegetable oil or canola oil- 3 teaspoons
10. Icing (optional)

Directions:

1. Preheat the oven to 180°C/350°F (160°C fan) for 20 minutes before starting the batter (Note 8). Place the shelf in the middle of the oven.
2. Grease 2 x 20cm / 8” cake pans with butter, then line with parchment / baking paper. (Note 9 more pan sizes) Best to use cake pan without loose base, if you can.

Combine Dry Ingredients

1. Whisk flour, baking powder and salt in a large bowl. Set aside.

Beat eggs:

1. 30 sec beat: Beat eggs for 30 seconds on Speed 6 of a Stand Mixer fitted with a whisk attachment, or hand beater.
2. Slowly add sugar: With the beater still going, pour the sugar in over 45 seconds.
3. Triple volume: Then beat for 7 minutes on speed 8, or until tripled in volume and white.

Finish cake batter:

1. Heat Milk-Butter: While the egg is beating, place butter and milk in a heatproof jug and microwave 2 minutes on high to melt butter (or use stove).
2. Gently add flour: When the egg is whipped, scatter 1/3 flour across surface, then beat on Speed 1 for 5 seconds. Add half remaining flour, then mix on Speed 1 for 5 seconds. Add remaining flour, then mix on speed 1 for 5 – 10 sec until the flour is just mixed in. Once you can’t see flour, stop straight away.
3. Combine milk, vanilla & oil – Pour hot milk, vanilla and oil into the now empty flour bowl.
4. Lighten with some Egg Batter: Add about 1 1/2 cups (2 ladles or so) of the Egg Batter into the Milk-Butter (don’t need to be 100% accurate with amount). Use a whisk to mix until smooth – you can be vigorous here. Will look foamy.
5. Slowly add milk: Turn the beater back on Speed 1 then pour the Milk mixture into the Egg Batter over 15 seconds, then turn the beater off.
6. Scrape and final mix: Scrape down sides and base of bowl. Beat on Speed 1 for 10 seconds – batter should now be smooth and pourable.

Bake:

1. Pour batter into pans.
2. Knock out bubbles: Bang each cake pan on the counter 3 times to knock out big bubbles (Note 10 for why)
3. Bake for 30 minutes or until golden and toothpick inserted into the centre comes out clean.

Cool & frost:

Turn out & cool: Remove from the oven. Cool in cake pans for 15 minutes, then gently turn out onto cooling racks. If used as layer cakes, cool upside down – a slight dome will flatten perfectly. Level cake = neat layers.

Frost: Once cake layers are fully cool, take frosting and coat the top cake in white icing. For the bottom cake, make the top part of the cake white and the sides of the big cake are purple. (Make sure to dye the frosting purple before assembling.)

For the decorations:

Pumpkin: Take a big chunk of fondant, and add some orange food dye to make the color of the pumpkin. Take a little

piece of fondant and dye it black with food dye and shape to make the stem of the pumpkin. Set aside.

Grave stones: Take a big chunk of fondant and dye light grey. Take the grey fondant and break into same size pieces, about 1/2 a tablespoon each. Mold each piece into the shapes of grave stones. Take red dye and add names onto the fondant.

Orange lines: Take a chunk of fondant and dye the same color as the pumpkin. Make thin rectangles that are long enough to wrap around the top tier of the cake.

Eyeballs: Take a piece of the white fondant and break into same sized pieces then make the pieces into thick circles. Grab another piece of fondant and dye it light blue, make them the same shape as the white fondant pieces, but make them smaller in diameter. Last but not least, take your red and black food dye to draw pupils on blue circles and squiggly red lines on the white circle. Assemble the eyes by stacking the blue circle onto the white circle.

Once you are done, assemble all of the fondant decorations onto cake and enjoy!