Every Trick or Treat in the Book

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It seems like the month of October has been about 15 minutes long…I can’t believe the best month of the year is already drawing to a close. I baked as spooky as possible at every turn, watched Nightmare Before Christmas, Hocus Pocus and both Addams Family movies at least 17 times, and longingly ogled every 12-foot skeleton from Home Depot I saw out and about, living their best 12-foot tall scary lives. Ya know, just creepin’ it real, as per usual. Naturally, I wanted to end the month on a hauntingly good note, so I made the most Halloween-y Halloween cake I could possibly think of:

This gorgeously macabre cake has a super spooky secret on the inside- it’s actually a Funfetti cake (the irony). Never fear, it is ensconced in black cocoa cream cheese frosting, drizzled with orange sparkly ooze, and stabbed (to death?) with black and orange chocolate shards, also made by yours truly. Just trying to keep my title of Hallo-queen over here. Also worth mentioning, the voodoo I used to make it so each slice is under 300 calories. I truly am a witchy woman. You won’t even need to exorcise after eating this Halloween cake.

For my cake, I simply used:

• 1 box of Pillsbury gluten free Funfetti cake
• 75 g (1/3 cup) fat free Greek yogurt
• 3 eggs
• 1 cup of milk

Preheat your oven to 350 degrees and prepare three 6-inch round cake pans with cooking spray and bake even strips. Mix all ingredients on low for 30 seconds in a stand mixer before switching to medium-high for two minutes. Evenly distribute batter into all three pans and bake for 30 minutes, or until a toothpick comes cleanly out the center of a cake. Let rest in the pan for 10 minutes before removing to cool completely on a cooling rack before frosting.

To make black frosting that doesn’t have a metric ton of black gel dye in it (it haunts the colon), I recommend using black cocoa in place of regular cocoa. For this frosting, I used:

• 8 ounces of 1/3 the fat cream cheese at room temp
• 112 grams (1/2 cup) light butter (can still be cold)
• 4 cups Lakanto monkfruit
• 2 TBS black cocoa
• 2 TBS milk
• 1 TBS vanilla
• 1/4 tsp citric acid if you like a less sweet frosting
• Black gel dye
• Black edible disco dust or luster dust

Whip the cream cheese and butter for two-three minutes, until light and fluffy. Add in half the monkfruit, the cocoa, the milk, the vanilla, and citric acid if using. Mix on medium speed until combined. Add in the remaining monkfruit and some black gel dye, mixing until everything has come together and you’ve achieved the color you want. Hold on to the disco dust or luster dust for later.

Take a cool cake layer on a cake board, face down, and top with a layer of frosting. Smooth out and repeat.

Coat your entire cake in frosting and smooth as best as you can. This is a crusting buttercream, so you can plop your cake in the fridge for 30 minutes, then use a Viva paper towel to smooth out any lumps or things that go bump in the night. Chill the cake while you make the chocolate bark.

To make my bark (which you can watch above), I used half a bag of black chocolate melts and a quarter of a bag of orange chocolate melts, both melted according to package instructions. Working quickly, I smoothed the black chocolate onto a baking pan with Parchment paper into a rectangle. Then I dolloped orange on top of this and used a chopstick to create the swirled pattern.

Now, place this in the fridge to set while you dust your cake with black glitter and make the sparkly orange ooze to drip on your cake. I simply dipped a paintbrush into my disco dust and tapped, tapped away to my heart’s content:

Both myself and my cake stand will be covered in black glitter from now until New Year’s Eve. We’re both thrilled by this.

To make the orange ooze, you need:

• 1 1/2 tsp orange luster dust
• 3 TBS powdered monkfruit or powdered sugar
• 4 1/2 tsp clear vanilla extract

Simply mix everything together in a bowl, then use a spoon to drip down the edges of your cake. I pretty much tipped my spoon straight down to get the drips to move further down the cake. Unlike using chocolate melts that will drip a long way down the cake, this style of drip doesn’t move as much, so use more liquid if you want longer drips (but on the flip side, this drip is actually edible, unlike those nasty chocolate melts…candy corn is even better than those bad boys, and I will die on that flavor hill).

Once you’re done with the drip, just cut your chocolate bark (that would taste better if it were made of candy corn…) into triangles and stab ’em into the top of a cake in a way that would make Freddy, Jason, or Ghostface proud. Then your glittery black and orange beacon of Halloween is ready to scare (or feed) the masses! Bone appetit!

Halloween is upon us, so abide by my favorite mantra of all time: live, laugh, scare. I will be soaking up every moment remaining in the month before we are lambasted by the pushiest holiday of the entire year: Christmas. I’ll be keeping Mariah Carey at bay with the help of this cake and Freeform’s 31 Nights of Halloween. Let’s get the Halloween party startled! Thanks for coming along with me on another month of Baketober adventures. I’m already scaring up ideas for next year…I’m always ready to (Ooogie) Boogey. ‘Til next time, my fellow eaters!

Recipe & Instructions