Sign From Above Halloween Skull Cake
A perfectly spooky red velvet cake, covered in American buttercream frosting and topped with a mountain of white chocolate skulls with blood dripping out of the eyes.
Ingredients
Cake
- 400 g all-purpose flour plain flour
- 320 g caster sugar superfine sugar
- 2 tbsp unsweetened cocoa powder
- 2 tsp baking powder
- 1 tsp bicarbonate of soda baking soda
- 1/2 tsp fine salt
- 3 large eggs 55g each
- 190 g vegetable oil
- 300 g buttermilk
- 7 g vanilla extract
- 20 g red liquid food dye
Frosting
- 3 batches of Swiss Meringue Frosting
Skulls
- 1 kg white cooking chocolate melted
Blood Drips
- 1 cup corn syrup
- 2 tbsp liquid red food dye
- 1/2 tsp strawberry flavoring
Instructions
Blood drips
- To make blood drips, combine corn syrup and red food dye together and mix well.
Skulls
- Skull mold - I used a skull mold that I bought from amazon. The exact name of the mold is ‘3D Skull Silicone Ice Cube Mold Tray’ If you google that it will come up with the one that I bought. The mold comes in two parts. The important thing with these skulls is that you don’t have weird air bubbles, so we’re going to fill the mold up in two sections. Firstly though, you want to make sure the white chocolate is warm (not burnt people lol) and not too stiff.
- To form the chocolate skulls - Fill the face part of the mold first. I piped the chocolate in using a piping bag. Gently tap the mold against your work bench to allow the chocolate to settle into the mold properly. Place the second half of the mold on top of the face part and fill the rest of the mold with chocolate. Tap against the work bench again and place in the freezer for 20 min to set. Repeat this until you have 30 skulls. Set aside on a baking tray in the fridge until ready to use.
Cake
- Please note: To make the 6 layered cake you see pictured; you’ll need to double the cake recipe only. All other measurements are enough to fill, crumb coat and finish decorating the cake.
- Preheat a fan-forced oven to 140C / 280F (160C / 320F for no fan). Spray four 20cm / 8-inch cake tins with oil spray and line the bottom with baking paper. Set aside
- Combine dry ingredients - Add the flour, sugar, cocoa powder, baking powder, bicarb soda and salt into a large mixing bowl and mix on low speed using a hand mixer to help everything combine.
- Add wet ingredients - Next, add the eggs, oil, buttermilk, vanilla and red food dye to the dry ingredients and continue mixing on low speed until everything is well combined. Scrape down the bowl and mix for a final 20 seconds on low speed.
- Divide batter - Divide the batter between the four cake tins. I find using an ice cream scoop to help me do this makes it easy to distribute the batter evenly so that everything bakes at the same time.
- Bake - Bake for 50-60 min or until a toothpick inserted comes out clean. If the pick comes out with wet batter, bake for a further 10 min at a time until fully baked. Once baked, allow the cakes to cool to room temperature inside the cake tins and then chill them in the fridge overnight. Chilling your cakes overnight makes them easier to trim and decorate. So I bake my cakes the day before I decorate them.
- Trim the cakes – To level the top of your cakes, use a cake leveler or large serrated knife to trim the top off.
- Adding the first layer - To crumb coat your cake, add a dab of cream cheese frosting onto an 20cm / 8-inch cake board or flat serving plate. Use a small offset spatula to spread the frosting around before adding the first cake layer. Gently press down the center of the cake layer to make sure it’s stuck to the frosting underneath.
- To layer the cake - Add frosting to a piping bag and frost a ring around the top of the cake. Fill the center with more frosting. Use your small offset spatula to smoothen out the frosting before you add the next layer of cake. Repeat with the remaining layers.
- To crumb coat the cake - Add more frosting around the top and sides of the cake. Use the small spatula to smoothen out the top and sides of the cake, taking care to fill in any gaps in between each layer of cake. Use a cake scraper (otherwise known as a bench scraper) to smoothen out the frosting on the sides and top. Get it as neat as you can. This should just be a neat, thin layer of frosting which is aimed at trapping any cake crumbs so that random bits of cake crumbs don’t show up on the final layer of frosting. Chill for 2 hours or overnight.
- Final layer of frosting - Pipe more Swiss meringue buttercream frosting around the side of the cake starting at the bottom, making your way to the top. Add frosting on top. Smoothen out using an offset spatula. To smoothen out, use a cake scraper to go around the cake until it’s smooth. Then use the cake scraper to smoothen out the top.
- To finish decorating - Place the skulls on top of the cake. Finish off by piping the blood into the eyes of the skulls and allow it to drip off the sides of the cake.
Video
Notes
Storage
This can be stored in an airtight container for up to three days.
Skull mold.
I get loads of questions about where the skull molds come from. I bought them on amazon years and years ago. I don't think the same exact ones exist anymore. They're actually not meant to be chocolate molds. They're ice cube molds. If you google skull ice cube molds, you should be able to find them.
A note on measurements – This recipe uses weight measurements for the most accurate results. Cup measurements can vary depending on where you are, which affects the precision needed for a recipe like this. Here is where you can learn more about how to measure ingredients using digital kitchen scales.
Nutrition
Calories:325kcal | Carbohydrates:37g | Protein:4g | Fat:16g | Saturated Fat:11g | Polyunsaturated Fat:1g | Monounsaturated Fat:4g | Trans Fat:1g | Cholesterol:24mg | Sodium:158mg | Potassium:140mg | Fiber:1g | Sugar:28g | Vitamin A:53IU | Vitamin C:1mg | Calcium:96mg | Iron:1mg
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