Halloween Cakes to Make : Spooky Cakes for your Party

There is never more scope for creativity than when you bake and decorate Halloween cakes. Whether you opt for cute and sweet little witches, evil monsters from the dark side, spider webs or something gross like the wonderful kitty litter cake, you'll never run out of great ideas.

When I was a kid, and this was back when dinosaurs roamed the earth, the highlight of our school Halloween party was eating the specially decorated sugar cookies that one mom brought every year. They were decorated with colored icing and trimmed with simply drawn little pumpkins or ghostlike figures. By today's standards, they were pretty tame -- but at the time, these cookies were the thing we looked forward to all year.

Thank you, Mrs. Phillips, for giving me this wonderful childhood memory.

Now let's get started making some wonderful Halloween cakes so your children will have a memory like mine to write about some day.

A Recipe for Pumpkin Cake

Using a cake mix is undoubtedly the easiest way to make a Halloween cake. Buying one ready made at the bakeshop is easier yet, but that's another story.

If you are into making your own, how about a pumpkin cake recipe? Halloween desserts scream out for pumpkin, don't you think?

Pumpkin Cake

2 cups flour

2 teaspoons baking soda

1/2 teaspoon salt

2 teaspoons cinnamon

1 teaspoon baking soda

2 cups sugar

1 cup oil

4 eggs

2 cups pumpkin

Combine all of these ingredients in the order given. Beat well. Spread the batter in a greased 12 inch by 15 inch baking pan. Bake in preheated oven at 350 degrees for about 40 minutes or until a cake tester comes out clean.

With pumpkin as the basis, your Halloween cake will be authentic.

Tip: If you want to make your cake more "orange" or if you want orange icing, add drops of red and yellow food color to the mix. Red and yellow added together make orange.

How about spinning a spooky spider web on top of your cake? It's easy to do, and if you use a cake mix you'll get this little beauty up and running in no time.

To do the spider, simply ice the cake with white icing, or with any color icing you like.

To make the spider web, try either one of these approaches:

1. Use strings of black licorice to make the web, referring to the picture as a guide.
2. Use black icing and draw the spider web on as shown.

Finish with a non-edible spider, readily available in stores where Halloween decorations are sold.

Alternatively, fashion your own, edible spider with black spider shaped candies, usually available where Halloween candies are sold.

You don't need to spend a fortune.

If you want to bake and decorate your Halloween cakes without breaking the budget, try a few of these money-saving tips:

1. To make black cakes or cookies, just stir a little Black Food Paste into the batter, or use black food coloring.

2. Want thumbs? Use pink grapefruit sections, or add a little red food color to yellow grapefruit sections.

3. Does your cake need bloody eyeballs? Blanche some cherry tomatoes in boiling water for a minute. Remove, drain, take the skins off and there you are. Perfectly disgusting bloody eyeballs.

4. Want your cake to foam like a witch's brew? Bake your cake in a tube pan. Remove from pan and insert a narrow glass or bud vase in the hole. Add some vinegar. When its time to foam, put a little baking soda in the vinegar and watch the action take place. (You might want to protect some areas of your cake with plastic wrap.)

4. Add a bit of black food paste to whipped cream used in decorating. Voila! Instant, richly dark whipped cream.

The secret is using two bundt pans

You can make a pumpkin-shaped Halloween cake by using two boxes of cake mix and baking them in bundt pans. If you use two cans of frosting instead of making your own, the Halloween cakes get easier yet. Last, locate a Hostess Ho Ho or other cake-roll snack to use in decorating.

After baking your two bundt cakes, allow them to cool fully before proceeding

Open the frosting. Remove a half cup, which you color black using black food paste. Color the remaining frosting orange. If you don't have orange food color, you can mix red and yellow food color in, a drop at a time until you get the color you want.

Find a cake plate. Place your first bundt cake upside down on this plate. That is the rounded side will be down and the flat side is facing up.

Spread frosting on the top. Do not frost sides at this time.

Place your second bundt cake with the flat side down on top of the iced part of the first cake.

Spread orange frosting on the entire cake, making up and down swooshing movements to resemble the dents on a pumpkin.

Put the Ho Ho in the middle of the top cake, forming a pumpkin stem. Alternatively, decorate with Halloween shaped candies to create a stem and leaves, or use shaped icing if you prefer.

The black frosting makes your eyes, nose and mouth. You could also use black rope licorice for this if you prefer.

Make a sheet cake -- then decorate

Bake any kind of sheet cake then spread chocolate frosting over top. Get some chocolate cookies and crush into crumbs. Sprinkle these chocolate crumbs over the top of the graveyard cake.

Next, you bake some cookies in a tombstone shape. You can get a Tombstone Cookie Cutter for this purpose.

When the cookies are baked, make a thin glaze of icing sugar and milk. Dip your cookies into this glaze. Using a toothpick or some other pointy object, carve RIP on the top.

Place your tombstone cookies so they are standing upright in the chocolate frosting. You can add additional decorations such as cookie or candy ghosts, black cats and pumpkins.

For a gross-them-out, but in a good way, try this quick, easy and remarkably tasty Halloween cake that resembles kitty litter in a box. Add some melted chocolate rolls, drape them over the side of the box, and oh my, It looks authentic!

Its up to you, but I recommend buying a brand new litter box and scoop for this project!

The video demonstration below shows you how to make this cake.