Halloween graveyard cake

Serves:

Makes one rectangular cake

Ingredients

For the cake

• 3 cups (450g) self-raising flour
• 2 1/2 cups (555g) caster sugar
• 6 eggs, room temperature
• 1 cup (250g) butter, softened and cubed
• 1 cup (250ml) milk
• 1/2 tsp vanilla paste

For the chocolate fudge icing

• 1/2 cup (115g) caster sugar
• 1/2 cup (125ml) milk
• 1/2 cup cocoa
• 1/2 cup (125g) butter
• 2 cups (300g) icing sugar

To decorate:

• Smarties
• Oreos
• writing icing pens
• figurines (from your toy box)

Method

Preheat oven to 180°C (160°C fan-forced) and grease and line a 20cm x 30cm rectangular cake tin. Combine all cake ingredients using an electric mixer and beat for 5 minutes. Spoon into prepared cake tin and bake for 30 minutes or until the cake is golden and a skewer comes out clean. Let cool in tin for about 5 minutes before turning out to cool completely on a wire rack.

For the icing, combine all ingredients except the icing sugar in a saucepan on medium heat. Cook, stirring often, for about 3 minutes, or until the butter melts and you have a lovely thick sauce. Remove from heat and set aside to cool completely. Beat in the icing sugar until smooth.

Once the cake is completely cool, spread over the icing. A palate knife makes this much easier, and if the icing feels a bit thick, dip the knife in hot water before smoothing and it will be much easier.

Now to decorate! Let the kids' imaginations run wild with this … We used Smarties to ‘outline’ each grave, then finely crushed Oreo biscuits to resemble freshly dug graves. Use any little ghoulish toys you have handy, too.

Serving Suggestions

Note

• You could skip making your own cake and just ice a slab sponge from the bakery or supermarket but the recipe below is super easy and takes only 5 minutes to put together.
• Make it a chocolate on chocolate affair by adding a few tablespoons of cocoa powder to the cake mixture before beating.
• If the writing icing is stiff in the tube just hold the tube in your hand for a minute or two to soften it up.
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• This recipe was created by Sophie Hansen for Kidspot, New Zealand’s best recipe finder: You can follow Sophie on Local is Lovely, Facebook, Twitter or Pinterest.