Halloween Birthday Cake

This was a chocolate birthday cake made for my son’s 5th birthday. It was great fun to make. I started off with 3 layers of cake instead of the usual 2. I needed 3 to get the height for the pumpkin and so that I could cut it into a good round shape.

I filled and covered the cake with chocolate butter cream. Not ganache for this one – 5 year old boys are just not that discerning. I then covered the cake with a thin layer of yellow fondant icing. I did not use marzipan for this cake as it has been my experience that most kids are not keen on it. I think it is one of those tastes that we acquire as we get older.

I added lumps of fondant around the cake to create the pumpkin shape and then covered the cake with sections of orange fondant. I cut a section of orange fondant for the front of the and then cut out the eyes and mouth before attaching it. I used various tools to create the ridges in the pumpkin and used powder colour brushed onto the fondant to create some shading.

The sections of orange fondant were higher than the cake itself which allowed me to cut out the top as a pumpkin would be cut. This also created a well for the sweets to go into.

I left the cake overnight (hidden) and then the following day after my little one had gone to bed added the sweets. I used candy canes to make a scaffolding type structure which I could then add other sweets to. I wanted to get the effect of sweets bulging out of the cake.

My son was absolutely thrilled and it was a job to cut it with lots of little fingers foraging for all the sweets.