With Halloween, just days away are you looking for a cool cake for your party or a centrepiece on your table? Look no further than this bat-themed cake! This recipe is a special one as I’ve teamed up with a good friend of mine at H’s Home Cooking so if you like this cake you might also like what else she gets up to!
What you’ll need:
For the cake:
- 200g Unsalted butter
- 200g Soft brown sugar
- 3 Eggs
- 200g Self-raising flour
- 25g Cocoa powder
- 5 tbsp Buttermilk
- ½ tsp Vanilla extract
- 3 tbsp Semi-skimmed milk
- 100g Dark chocolate chips
- Red gel food colouring
For the icing:
- 300g Icing sugar
- 1 tsp Vanilla
- 160g Unsalted butter
- 5 tbsp Heavy/double cream
For the white chocolate ganache:
- 100ml Heavy/double cream
- 125g White chocolate (we’ll be using buttons)
- Red gel food colouring
For the Bat Decorations (optional):
- Black fondant icing
You can use any Halloween themed decorations on the top, we chose to use black fondant icing to make little bats but if you don’t fancy making them, you can buy them at most cake decorating shops.
Let’s get started!
- Preheat your oven to 170˚ Grease and line a 20cm/8in cake tin.
- In a large bowl, beat together 200g of room temperature butter and the soft brown sugar until the mixture is a creamy consistency.
3. In another bowl, mix together the self-raising flour and the cocoa powder.
4. Crack the eggs into a jug and add in the buttermilk, milk, vanilla extract and red food colouring (we ended up using the whole tube to make the sponge red!) then give it a mix until it’s all combined.
5. Add half of the liquid mix and the dry mix (the flour and cocoa powder) into the creamed butter and fold together. Repeat with the second half of the liquid and flour mix until the cake batter is smooth.
6. Add the dark chocolate chips into the mix and stir to evenly distribute them.
7. Pour the mixture into your prepared cake tin and bake in the centre of the oven for 50 minutes or until the middle of the cake is set.
8. Leave to cool on a cooling rack and then slice the cake into two across the middle creating the two layers of a sandwich cake.
To make the buttercream and ganache:
- Mix together the icing sugar, the remaining butter, vanilla extract and 3 tbsp with an electric whisk until the mixture is light and fluffy and has lightened in colour. It can be mixed by hand just takes a little longer and more arm muscle!
2. Using a spatula or palette knife, smooth about 1/3 of the buttercream over the top of one of the sponges so it meets the edges and stack the other sponge on top.
3. Using the rest of the buttercream, cover the top of the cake and the sides then set it aside to firm up careful not to mix the crumbs up in the icing.
4. In the meantime, heat the double cream in a pan until it starts to boil and then pour over the chocolate buttons.
5. Mix the cream and white chocolate together and add in the red food colouring.
6. Once the ganache has thickened slightly, use a spoon to drip some down the edges and pour the rest on the top.
7. To finish, decorate with any type of Halloween sweets/decorations you like, we went for bats that we made using a bat mould and black fondant icing (to prop up the bats, we used sticks of spaghetti that we cut down to roughly 2ins).
Now all that’s left to do is to cut the cake and eat it!
I hope you enjoy making this spooky Halloween cake! If you have a go don’t forget to share your makes with us on Instagram @aboxofbuttons or on Twitter @aBoxofButtons! See you next time!
A Box of Buttons 