Halloween Evil Eye Cake Recipe
An Original Recipe by Lorraine Elliott
Recipe Overview
Preparation time: 75 minutes plus overnight resting time
Cooking time: 120 minutes
Serves: 12-14 people
The cake part if best made 1 day ahead
Ingredients Needed
For Cake:
- 500g/17.6ozs. butter
- 375g/13.2ozs. white chocolate
- 3 cups/660g/23.3ozs caster or superfine sugar
- 3 cups/750ml/0.8 quart water
- 3 eggs, at room temperature
- 3 tablespoons Lorann Red Velvet food colouring
- 3 cups/450g/1lb cake flour
- 3/4 cup/112g/4ozs cornflour/fine cornstarch
- 2 teaspoons baking powder
For Buttercream Frosting:
- 375g/13.3ozs. butter, room temperature
- 190g/6.7ozs. caster sugar
- 115ml/4flozs. water, room temperature (test on wrist)
- 3/4 cup black cocoa
- 1 teaspoon vanilla extract
Step-By-Step Instructions
Step 1 PREPARE - Preheat oven to 150c/300F. Line two 8x8 inch heart shaped baking tins with parchment.
Step 2 MELT - Place the butter, white chocolate, sugar and water in large pot on low heat and stir until melted and combined. Cool for 10 minutes.
Step 3 WHISK - Whisk in the red food colouring and eggs. Then in a large bowl whisk together the flour, cornflour, cocoa and baking powder. Very, very gradually add in the wet batter to the dry mixture. If you add this in too quickly you will get lumps. This is a large batter mix so make sure to get the bits of flour at the bottom.
Step 4 BAKE - Bake for 1 hour and then cover with foil and bake for another 30-40 minutes or until a skewer inserted comes out clean. Cool in tin. Once cold, cover with cling film.
Step 5 FROSTING - Fit a beater attachment to your mixer and beat the butter, sugar and cocoa together on the lowest speed for 1 minute (cover it with a teatowel so you don't get cocoa everywhere). Then once the black cocoa is incorporated, increase the speed to 3 out of 10 for 3 minutes. Add the water and vanilla in at low speed and beat at speed 3 for another 5 minutes or until you can no longer feel the sugar grains between your fingers. Cover with cling film.
Step 6 CRUMB COAT - Take 3/4 cup of frosting and place it in a bowl. Trim the tops off the cakes until even and place one cake on a cake board. Smooth some icing over this. Then place the other cake on top. Cover with a thin coat of frosting all over the cake as well as filling any gaps between the cake. Refrigerate uncovered for 30 minutes until buttercream sets hard.
Step 7 FINAL COAT - Add another coat of buttercream on top of the cake and sides using a cake smoother to smooth it over. This takes time so don't rush this part. You want it to be even on all sides and the top.
Step 8 PIPING - Using a toothpick trace a large eye on top in the buttercream to use as a guide. Using a small plain tip #1 fill a piping bag and pipe stripes starting at the eye and going to the end. Then switch to a small star tip and pipe around the edge in small circles back and forth (see video above for the piping motion).
Step 9 SPRINKLES - I like to use a small teaspoon and tweezers to apply the sprinkles. Use gold sprinkles for the upper and lower eyelid. Use white jimmies for the sclera. Use a mix of blue and green for the iris and use dark purple or black pearls for the pupil. Use the gold rods for the upper eyelashes and smaller blue rods for lower eyelashes. Use tiny stars, heart and star for under the eye area. Use blue metallic cachous for around the edge.
This cake is suitable to freeze in case you want to eat it later. See instructions above.
Substitution notes and ingredients:
Black cocoa is a specific type of cocoa found at speciality baking stores. You can sub this with regular cocoa and black food colouring (make sure the black food colouring is fat soluble or oil based).
Lorann Red Velvet Emulsion is the best food colouring for making red velvet cake as it adds a real intensity and doesn't add much flavour. Supermarket colourings generally are not strong enough to make a red velvet cake. You can of course use a red velvet cake mix too.
Personal Note
While this is a great Halloween party cake I'm actually going to give this to Mr NQN's newphew Finn for his birthday that falls a couple of weeks before Halloween. It has been a very hectic and stressful year so I'm not quite up for a Halloween party this year (also I have some PTSD from the moth invasion that started when moths came in because people kept leaving the screen door open during one Halloween party).
Kids love these sorts of spooky cakes and for my birthday this year Finn had drawn me a birthday card that showed what he thought of with me. It was a cake with a face on it and candles. There was also cookies and ice cream and on it. Kids are terrifying because they're so honest and have little guile. Clearly I was the aunt that brings dessert with her and that's fine with being identified that way!
So tell me Dear Reader, how would a kid describe you? Do you wear any evil eye amulets or jewellery?
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