Gothic Cakes for a Dramatic Halloween

This is the one time of year black may feature heavily on The Swelle Life! For this season's Halloween edition of cakes, I began searching as I always do for interesting sweet things, but was flooded with images of cutesy pumpkins, ghosts and witches that were more suited to a children's party. I was looking for something more stylised and well-executed, so I searched 'Gothic cakes' and was immediately rewarded with those kinds of cakes that put you in awe of their creator - people who have that special combination of vision, skill and patience. (I watched Choccywoccydoodah last night and was mentally exhausted just observing a few minutes of one of their chocolatiers carving out Manolos and Louboutins from white chocoate for a shoe-themed wedding cake. But to be fair, I didn't have far to go.)

The cake above is an homage to Tim Burton's Corpse Bride, but unfortunately I don't have a credit for it because I found it on a spam site. (Those sites use like to entice googlers with cool images and of course they never credit the original source. If you know who created this fantastic cake please let me know!)

A dark twist on the red velvet cake, here is the Black Velvet Cake by Jaclyn of Food Plus Words

It is topped with a 'deeply chocolate, fluffy marshmallow icing', and Jaclyn warns that this cake will 'absolutely turn your mouth black' but that it's totally worth it. I believe her! And a gross mouth kind of fits with the Halloween theme anyway so that just adds to the appeal. (Not a date cake, then.)

Want to make it yourself? Jaclyn shares the recipe here

And below is a Gothic wedding cake (no credit given for this one either!) featuring skulls with extremely long teeth which keeps it from looking too sinister (it's slightly comical but that's ok):

If you're looking for a major project, how about this haunted house cake? It combines baking with craft - you have to make the house, tombstone, tree and the man out of black construction paper using templates, and I have no idea how they get thehouse to look as it does, I think you could spend all day finishing that alone. If you're brave you can find the recipe here

 

If you'd like to see more Gothic Cakes, this Pinterest board will help you indulge!

Comments

[Epicurienne]

I love that black velvet cake with the orange sprinkles - so lush and intense looking (and calorific no doubt!) but so effective for this time of year!