Mandy’s Graveyard Cake
Easy
This spooky graveyard cake, sugar bones and all, is a fun sweet treat to make for Halloween. Recipe below for a chocolate sponge and buttercream, but you can also use a box mix or even decorate a bought sponge, which is great if you’re looking for something for the kids to do on mid-term break. I used cupcake decorations for the headstones, but you could make your own with melted chocolate, or even pipe RIP on some biscuits with royal icing. Around this time of year, you can also often find bone-shaped cake sprinkles to fill your dug-up grave if you don’t fancy piping your own little skellie with royal icing, or simply use a gummy skeleton.
PREP IN
30 MIN
COOK IN
70 MIN
SERVE
10
Mandy’s Graveyard Cake
Easy
PREP IN
30 MIN
COOK IN
70 MIN
SERVE
10
Introduction
This spooky graveyard cake, sugar bones and all, is a fun sweet treat to make for Halloween. Recipe below for a chocolate sponge and buttercream, but you can also use a box mix or even decorate a bought sponge, which is great if you’re looking for something for the kids to do on mid-term break. I
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Ingredients
- For the sponge
- 225g plain flour
- 85g cocoa powder, sifted
- 1 ½ tsp baking powder
- 1 ½ tsp baking soda
- 350g caster sugar
- 1 tsp salt
- 2 eggs
- 250ml milk
- 125ml sunflower or light olive oil
- 2 tsp vanilla extract
- 250ml boiling water
- 115g unsalted butter, softened
- 190g icing sugar
- ½ tsp vanilla extract
- Pinch of salt
- 2 tbsp hot water
- 50g good quality 70% dark chocolate, melted and cooled slightly
- 1pkt (+- 150g) chocolate filled Oreos or Bourbon biscuits
- Headstone cupcake picks
- Bone shaped cake sprinkles or skeleton shaped sweets*
- Any other spooky decorations you like
FOR THE BUTTERCREAM:
TO DECORATE:
Method
- 1. For the sponge, preheat oven to 180°C / 160°C fan assisted then grease a 23x23cm (9x9 inch) square tin with butter and line the bottom with parchment paper. Tip: I like to do a strip of parchment paper that overhangs two sides of the cake tin so that I can use the overhang to lift the baked sponge out of the tin.
- 2. Whisk together the dry ingredients in a large bowl.
- 3. In a medium sized jug or bowl, whisk together the wet ingredients except the hot water.
- 4. Add the wet ingredients to the dry and mix with a whisk or electric mixer just until batter is combined.
- 5. Slowly add the hot water and mix just until combined. The batter will be very liquid.
- 6. Pour the batter into the prepared baking tin and bake until a toothpick inserted into the middle of the cake comes out clean, about 1 hour to 1 hour 10 minutes.
- 7. Remove from the oven and leave to cool completely in the tin on a wire rack. Before decorating, turn out from tin and remove the parchment paper.
- 8. For the buttercream frosting, beat butter with an electric mixer on low speed until smooth.
- 9. Add the icing sugar, vanilla, salt and the hot water and beat on low speed until frosting becomes creamy. Make sure to scrape down the sides of the bowl as needed.
- 10. Add the melted chocolate and mix on low speed until buttercream is a uniform colour, scraping down the sides and bottom of the bowl with a spatula to make sure everything is well mixed.
- 11. *If you aren’t able to find bone shaped cake sprinkles or anything suitable like a gummy skeleton, you can make your own skellie with royal icing. Using royal icing powder, follow the instructions on the pack to mix a little bit of royal icing that holds its shape when piped. Fill a piping bag or corner of a freezer bag with the icing then snip off just the tip. Pipe various bone shapes onto parchment paper (I loosely copied an image that I found online for the shape of a full skeleton) then leave the icing to air-dry overnight.
- 12. To decorate your cake, place the cold sponge onto a serving plate then spread the buttercream over the top in a mostly even layer. You can also frost the sides of the cake if you like. Keep about 1-2 tbsp of frosting.
- 13. Using a spoon or teaspoon, channel your inner gravedigger and dig out a grave, only going about halfway down, to remove the cake. Place the dug-out cake next to the hole. Don’t worry if it doesn’t come out in one piece, you’re just going for a mound of dirt!
- 14. Use the reserved frosting and spread a thin layer inside the dug-out grave and on any bare bits of cake on the mound, this will keep the cake from drying out and will also help the biscuit crumbs to stick.
- 15. Place the biscuits in a strong freezer bag then use a heavy rolling pin or saucepan to bash them to crumbs. Alternatively, you can blitz them in a food processor to fine crumbs.
- 16. Sprinkle the biscuit crumbs all over the cake to cover the frosting as much as possible so it now resembles a muddy graveyard.
- 17. Arrange the bone sprinkles/gummy or royal icing skellie inside the grave.
- 18. Finally, arrange headstones in rows on top of the cake and finish off with any other decorations you have, like little pumpkins, spiders, or bats.
- 19. This cake recipe keeps very well as it is oil-based. Store at room temperature in a sealed tin or container for up to 5 days.
