Jack O’ Lantern Halloween – Easy Cake Sculpture
There’s nothing more traditional about Halloween than a Jack O’ Lantern.
Once carved from turnips to scare off unfriendly spirits, modern-day Jack O’ Lanterns can be crafted to delight, surprise, give us the creeps or simply inspire choruses of “Trick or Treat!”
A Jack O’ Lantern cake is the perfect Halloween cake for beginning cake decorators and cake sculptors, but the more advanced your skills, the more intricate and creative you can get. Either way, this Halloween cake is sure to be a big hit with your friends at your next Halloween party.
Jack o’ Lantern Cake Instructions
Before decorating this cake, try out various facial expressions on a piece of paper (freehand or with stencils) just like you might do before carving a Jack o’ Lantern with the kids. For inspiration, search online for “virtual jack o lantern.”
1. Begin with two bundt cakes made with a firm cake such as butter or pumpkin (recipe below).
2. Level the bottoms of the cakes.
3. Frost each bottom with orange colored buttercream and fit together to form your pumpkin.
4. Frost the outside of your pumpkin with the orange buttercream and smooth.
5. Fit an icing bag with a round tip and fill with orange or chocolate buttercream and pipe the seams (vertical lines) of the pumpkin from top to bottom.
6. Again using orange colored or chocolate buttercream and the round tip, pipe the outlines of the facial features.
* One method is to use a small star tip and alternating with a lighter orange or yellow and chocolate buttercream, fill in the teeth and gaps, eyes and nose. Facial features can also be highlighted with edible glitter or coloring dust.
* For a glowing effect, use yellow gel instead of buttercream icing.
*Go 3-D and model facial features with rolled butterceam icing or marzipan and attach with icing to cake.
Finally, add a top to your Jack O’ Lantern. One way to do this is to pipe green buttercream leaves and add a stem modeled with rolled buttercream.
And what more fitting cake to sculpt your Jack o’ Lantern Halloween cake from than pumpkin?
Halloween or Harvest Pumpkin Cake
Note: This pumpkin cake makes a nice treat for the grown-up’s too, especially when covered with buttercream and chopped walnuts or pecans. And, it’s even better after mellowing overnight in the fridge.
Another variation for a Halloween party would be to bake this in a Halloween cake novelty pan and then decorate. Baked as a sheet cake, you can create a Halloween picture with stencils and confectioners sugar or cake spray paints.
4 cups canned pumpkin
6 cups sugar
2 cup vegetable oil
6 eggs
6 cups flour
1 tsp salt
1 tsp baking powder
2 tsp baking soda
1 tsp ground cloves
2 tsp ground cinnamon
2 tsp ground nutmeg
Preheat the oven to 350° F. Grease and flour 2 10-inch bundt pans. In a bowl, blend the pumpkin, sugar, oil, and eggs. In a separate bowl, sift the remaining ingredients. Gradually add the pumpkin mixture to the dry ingredients and mix until well blended. Pour batter into prepared pan and bake for 1 hour or until a toothpick inserted in the middle comes out clean. Let cake cool in pan for 5 minutes, and then release. Allow the cake to completely cool before decorating.
This recipe is adapted from our “Cake Decorating Made Easy!” Video Books. Here’s what one reader had to say about them:
“If you are new to decorating or an old pro, you’ll learn something new and helpful from these books. They are WONDERFUL!!!”
Thelma Gonzales, Tucson, AZ
Thinking about Thanksgiving? Check out our Thanksgiving Cake Design Ideas!
Here’s a final, but important tip for your Halloween cakes: When mixing dark Halloween colors like black and brown, keep in mind that the amount of food coloring needed can bring a bitter taste to your icing. So here’s what you can do to battle the bitter:
* Use a more concentrated form of color – gel, paste and powder colorings are all more intense than liquid. Gel’s the easiest to use.
* Use dark chocolate in your icing, and then you’ll just need a wee bit of coloring.
* And if the cake’s for little ones, they might enjoy black licorice used for trimming instead of piped icing, and crushed, dark chocolate cookies to fill in larger areas.
Happy Halloween Cake Making!
Samantha Mitchel, Co-Author
Cake Decorating Made Easy! Vol. 1 & 2
The World’s First Cake Decorating Video Books
For fantastic cake decorating tips, tricks and secrets
of the pros, just enter your name & email address
above and click, “Send My Free Cake Tips!”
.jpg)
