It’s that time of year again! Time to get SPOOKY!
Halloween, and Autumn in general, is my favourite time of the year. I love everything about it. From the crisp mornings to the falling leaves, the nights drawing in, all pumpkin everything and of course, Halloween itself.
My husband Tim and I throw a Halloween party every year and despite 2018 being a pretty big year for us already party-wise what with my Harry Potter themed 30th, our wedding and reception, nothing was going to stop us from throwing our annual spooktacular!
This year we went even bigger with actual scare actors dressed and made up like zombies to scare greet our guests as they arrived, an experimental lab gone wrong bathroom complete with body on a stretcher, a haunted graveyard stairwell and a funeral parlour-esque party zone!
With a bit of a zombie theme going on, we decided it was only fitting for the newlyweds to go as a zombie bride and groom!
We also make lots of food, put on tasty snacks and sweet treats and I, of course, make a dessert. This year I continued the haunted graveyard theme from the stairwell and transferred that to a 3 tier cake!
Here’s how it was made –
I wanted a bright colour sponge inside to contrast with the black and grey icing on the outside, I also wanted a crowd pleasing flavour everyone would like so I went with a classic madeira cake recipe and coloured it red using Sugarflair Party Green. I wrapped the cakes in clingfilm and let them sit overnight. Then the following day I split the cakes and filled them with a contrasting purple vanilla buttercream by using the recipe here and colouring it with Sugarflair Grape Violet.
I then crumb coated the cakes with buttercream and covered the tiers in a later of marbled white and black Renshaw Sugarpaste (I’ve got an article on how to do that here on Food Heaven) and smoothed them with Flexi Smoothers (I’ve got an article about them here). I then let them firm up overnight. Once this was set, I dowelled the bottom two tiers and stacked carefully, sticking together with royal icing.
I made the little pumpkins and gravestones out of Karen Davis Marshmallow Paste which I find great for modelling. I’ve got a little tutorial on how to make the pumpkins here. I just stopped before doing the face. The gravestones were made using a variety of gravestone cutters I have collected over the years.
The fully edible (but I’m gonna keep it forever instead) church topper I made using Renshaw pre-coloured black modelling paste (because life is far too short to colour anything that dark) and this metal church cutter set I got years ago. I made little windows using yellow modelling paste and little ghosts using a silicone mould and white modelling paste. I stuck everything down with black royal icing.
I finished the cake with black 25mm ribbon, a black sugarpaste covered 12″ cake board and 15mm black ribbon around the outside of that, stuck down with double sided sticky tape.
I really loved making this cake and I loved how it looked on the table at the party!
Check out last years cake here and below for more pictures from this year’s Halloween party and have a look at my Instagram for all the videos!
Happy Halloween!
Britt xo
