Hello, Halloween! I see you just around the corner and I can’t wait. I’ve been baking up some festive Halloween-inspired treats for a couple of weeks and I hope this week’s posts provide some inspiration if you need some. I’ve seen quite a few variations on ghost cakes and cupcakes similar to this one many times, and I think they are all equal parts impressive and adorable. This was the first thing on my baking list for this year. (Speaking of which, I’ve already started planning my Halloween baking for next year. I think I may have a problem.) My biggest problem was deciding which of the gorgeous variations to try. Finally I settled on this one and I am so glad I did. The finished product was visually stunning and everyone who saw it displayed throughout the day was commenting on how cool it looked.
I’m not even going to post a specific recipe for this cake because really, you could make it a gazillion different ways. I opted for a chocolate cake with raspberry filling, frosted with vanilla buttercream and glazed with dark chocolate ganache. Finally, I made the ghosts with a marshmallow frosting and made a black powdered sugar glaze for the faces. (I used an Ateco 809 tip for the larger ghosts, and a smaller unlabeled round tip for some size variation.) With all the cake, filling, frosting, etc. this is obviously a sugar overload so a very small piece is plenty and even then, I scraped most of the ghosts off.
Though I didn’t try it this time around, I think this similar cake from Martha Stewart is really cute and would be even easier than what I did since it uses full marshmallows rather than frosting for the ghosts. I have also seen mini-cupcakes with a single frosting ghost on top. Both ideas are super cute variations. I do think a tube of black decorating gel would have been easier to use than a homemade glaze applied with a toothpick (what I did), so next time I would go that route. If you have any sort of Halloween party or pitch-in coming up and you want a dessert to impress, this is a great choice.
Source: inspired by I am Baker
