Halloween may or not be one of your favorite holidays, but if you’re like me, you find decorating Halloween cakes is terrific fun! And it’s such a treat to see the excitement and delight this cake brings to the children.

Our Witch’s Cauldron Halloween Cake is a design we adapted from the exciting volcano cake. Just before serving, the brew begins steaming (thanks to some dry ice magic).

How To Make A Cauldron Halloween Cake

Shopping List

Bundt pan or large, glass oven-safe bowl (one that isn’t too much bigger at the top than bottom)

Dry ice: Check your Yellow Pages for a distributor. Follow all safety precautions given to you. You can read them now at http://www.wrh.noaa.gov/vef/kids/dryice.php
Sturdy, round cake board

Orange or red foil gift-wrap to cover cake board and miniature red and/orange lights (optional)

Cake batter (scratch or mix) and decorating items/tools

Bake a cake that has some density, such as butter or pumpkin, inside the greased and floured pan or glass bowl. If you are baking this in the glass bowl, the oven temperature needs to be lowered by 25 degrees.

And, here’s a charmingly simple tip for when its time to release your cake.

Professional Baker’s Grease

You’re going to be using equal parts flour, vegetable shortening and vegetable oil. Before combining these, cream the shortening. Then incorporate the vegetable oil and flour, blending well.

This concoction of greasy paste is especially useful when baking in Bundt pans with all those crevices.

This greasy tip comes straight from “Cake Decorating Made Easy!”
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Now that your cake’s in the oven, place the foil over your cake round. When you’re cake’s done baking, allow it to cool in its pan for a few minutes, and then release it onto a wire rack and allow it to cool completely before proceeding.

Then place your cake on the foil-covered cake round (if you used a glass bowl with a narrow bottom for baking, slice off just enough so that the bottom is wide enough to support the rest).

Next, it’s time to carve out a well. Make it big enough for a medium juice glass or jelly jar (which will hold the dry ice) and that will allow a good amount of steam to rise.

But don’t carve the hole so wide that there’s not much cake left!

For a glass bowl cake, carve out the well just big enough for submerging the glass or jar. A Bundt cake will already have the well, but you may need to widen it. Place the glass inside the well.

Ice your Halloween cauldron cake with black buttercream (see tips below) and smooth. For an eerie glow, add green decorating gel.

Now this cake starts getting really fun! It’s time to add the ingredients to your witch’s brew.

If your imagination needs a spark, ask children what goes into a witch’s brew – they’ll have lots of fun and funny ideas.

Traditional spooky tales will mention gastronomically ghastly items such as eye of newt, bat’s wing and lizard’s tail.

If you enjoy modeling, sculpt these from rolled buttercream. Or you can get creative with candies (string licorice makes perfect spider legs) and/or your icing bag and tips.

Here’s a method that works like a charm! Cut out shapes (free hand or with stencils) from a jellyroll cake (flat, not rolled). Decorate with gel and icing and plop onto your witch’s brew.

You might even want to add a fiery glow around the cauldron by placing miniature red and orange lights around the base of your Halloween cake so that they reflect off the foil.

Then, when it’s time to serve, don your witch’s hat and announce to the children that you are brewing a special witch’s cauldron cake.

Tell them you need their help to make the spell work. Ask them to recite the following line (Shakespeare’s Macbeth): “Double, double, toil and trouble, fire burn and cauldron bubble!”

Once they have it down, ask them to recite each verse slightly louder and faster than the last.

While they’re casting their spell, return to the kitchen, and using a pair of tongs, set a few chunks of the dry ice into the glass that is in the cake’s well.

Then slowly pour hot water over the dry ice.

As the excitement builds around the table, present your steaming cauldron cake and plug in the lights (if you used them).

After the steam dies down, you can conjure it up again by stirring the dry ice, or if needed, adding more hot water. After serving, be sure the dry ice is out of reach of little hands before you walk away from the cake.

If you enjoyed this holiday cake idea, see what we have in store for Thanksgiving Cakes!

Last but not least, here’s the tip for the black icing on your cauldron: The amount of food coloring needed to concoct black can bring enough bitter taste to your buttercream to scare away the guests, so here are your counter spells!

Use gel or paste coloring. It’s intensified, so not as much is needed.

Start with chocolate icing, and you’ll need less coloring to get to black.

Instead of chocolate or black coloring, crumble brownies (or the outside of Oreos) and press onto a plain (non crusting) buttercream.

Happy Halloween Cake Making!