Halloween Cake Ideas

The season is upon us when ghouls and goblins arrive at Halloween parties looking for candy goodies and your job is to make them happy--with your own Halloween cake ideas.

Cake technology (yes, there is such a thing) has come a long way since dowel rods and plastic cake level separators. Duff, the head chef and owner of Charm City Cakes in Illinois, is probably one of the most well known pastry chefs in the world, but not for creating beautiful wedding cakes seen at Governors’ Balls and what not. Duff is a genius when it comes to extreme cakes. Not always the tastiest of things but always pretty darn cool!

With the right bit of imagination and a little bit of cake baking ability, you can create anything you want. You can make things move by gutting out sections of cake and adding gears. You can even create fire if you so choose. Consider writing down your cake ideas – ask yourself if you want the cake to be more of a display of your culinary genius or if you want it to be eaten and enjoyed by all. Do you want the cake to be gory or is it for kids? Sheet cake or 3D? Be creative! This cake is for Halloween and so it should be fun.

Graveyard Cake: Bake a sheet cake - it’s entirely up to you if you want to make layers or not. Cover your cake in white fondant tinted with a brown-green color. Crush up Oreo cookies and place shredded coconut in a baggie with green food dye. Cut lady finger cookies in half and cover in melted chocolate and pick up a food coloring pen. Write things on to the lady fingers and stick in to the cake. Make mounds of cookie dust in front of them and sprinkle the green coconut flakes to make grass.

Kitty Litter Cake: As gross as it sounds it’s intriguing to make. Purchase chocolate and vanilla crunchies and process them slightly. Make 2 sheet cakes and choose a filling. Buy a real litter box and litter scoop. Once your cake is made put the bottom layer in to the cat pan, add the filling then the second cake. Ice the top and sprinkle liberally with the crunchies. Make chocolate butter cream icing and make rough streaks in the “litter”.

Haunted House: This type of cake can go one of two ways. The first is very basic. A sheet cake with piping using a thin tip to draw the outline of a house then fill it in with whatever items you feel a haunted house needs. The second is more extreme by cutting blocks of cake, stacking them and reinforcing them with rods. Create fences using melted chocolate and parchment paper. The same technique can be used with royal icing. Windows can be made as can ghosts and shutters. The cake can be covered with poured fondant or iced.

Bleeding Head: Much like the haunted house cake you will be making at least 5-8 9” round cakes. Stack them and reinforce with dowels. Carve the cake with a sharp serrated knife in to a face. Cover the cake with chocolate modeling clay paying attention to the details of the face (mouth, eyes etc.). Make a food dye wash with water and black food coloring then paint on shadowing. Chiclets gum or royal icing can be used to make the teeth. Prior to putting the modeling chocolate on the cake inject it with red syrup. You may also remove the top of the head, scoop out some and add strawberry jam. If you want to be gory you can create an eye out of a small balloon by filling it with strawberry jam until large enough for the eye socket. Place one end of a tube inside the balloon taping it in place then slide the tube through the head to the other side and attach the other end to a squeeze bladder. Squeeze it until the balloon expands and pops.

You can go simple by buying pans through Wilton in the shape of haunted houses, various monsters, pumpkins, and the like.

Cake is your canvas and your Halloween cake ideas will revolve around that spongy goodness. The cake and materials you choose to use will all determine how your cake will turn out.

Making 3D cakes or extreme cakes require you to do some carving. If this is your goal keep in mind that the density of the cake matters a lot especially if it needs to hold weight. Avoid cakes that have “moist” on the box or “fudge” or added ingredients like chocolate chips or funfetti. These cakes will crumb even if you freeze them a bit. If you slightly powder your cake with confectioner’s sugar the crumbing will be minimal.

Fondant and modeling chocolate make a cake look great – especially Halloween cakes as you can make a stark white fondant covering and do blood splatter on it. The trick to using these coverings is to first coat the cake powdered sugar then ice the cake with a very thin layer of icing. This will keep the fondant from slipping. Too much can cause severe slipping and cracking.

Halloween cakes can live or die on the filling. If you are using covering, be sure to not use too much or the filling will ooze out all over the place and the covering will slip and eventually crack.

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