This Halloween Drip Cake has four layers of chocolate cake, vanilla buttercream, a chocolate drip and a hidden piñata centre.

Ooh yes! This epic drip cake is hiding an epic secret. The centre is filled with all kinds of Halloween treats.

Jump to Recipe

How To Make the Cake

I went with a chocolate cake, it seems like it’s been a while since I made a chocolate cake, plus, with this being a Halloween bake and chocolate being everywhere at the moment, I thought why not add a little more chocolate?

Whenever I make a chocolate cake, I always use light brown sugar instead of caster sugar. I find it just gives the cake a more fudgy texture and a slight hint of caramel.

For this cake, because it is a pinata cake I used an 8” cake. I just find it the perfect size for this type of cake. You get a good hole in the centre for all your delicious treats and there is still a lot of cake.

When it comes to making chocolate cakes, I remove some of the self-raising flour and replace it with cocoa powder. I still find using this method cake still makes the chocolate cake a little dry, so I always add in milk. This is the perfect way to help moisten the cake.

I also find the best egg to other ingredients ratio is 1 large egg to every 50g of dry ingredients. So, for example, for every 50g of light brown sugar, I use 1 egg. This cake has 500g of sugar in it, so I used 10 large eggs. Using large eggs also helps to keep the cake moist.

I baked this cake in 2 8” cake tins and then halved them both. I found doing it this way still gave me some pretty good cake layers.

If you struggle to cut cakes then I highly recommend a cake leveller, it just makes the job so much easier.

Because you are making the cakes in two tins rather than four it will take them slightly longer to bake. I recommend baking them at a lower temperature for longer. If you try and bake them at a high temperature you will most likely end up with burnt cake on the outside and raw cake in the middle.

Related Recipes

Spider Web Cake

Witches Brew Brownies

Blood Spatter Macarons

A couple of ways to tell if the cakes are baked:

If you use a cake skewer test the thickest part of the cake. If it comes out clean, then the cakes are ready. If there is still cake batter on them then you need to put them back into the oven. Remember and test both cakes as depending on your oven one might have cooked quicker than the other.

Another way to test the cakes is to gently press down on the top of the cake if it springs back to its original shape when you remove your finger then it is ready. If you end up with a finger-shaped dent in the cake, then you need to pop it back into the oven.

I would recommend putting the cakes back into the oven for 3-4 minutes and checking them again. Repeat until the skewer comes out clean or the cake springs back when you remove your finger.

The cakes need to be completely cool before you can start levelling them and decorating them. I would recommend leaving them in the cake tin for 15-20 minutes before moving them to a wire rack to cool fully.

If your cakes have a slight dome on the top, if you put them upside down on the wire rack, so dome side down, the weight of the cake will help flatten the dome, so you don’t need to trim it.

How To Make the Buttercream

For this cake, I decided to go with three colours. I am sure I have said this in other posts before but I always associate the colours purple, orange and green with Halloween, so these were the three colours I went with.

To make the buttercream I beat together the icing sugar, unsalted butter and vanilla extract. You need to use unsalted butter for buttercream. The kind that comes wrapped in foil normally in 250g blocks. If you use anything else, like a spread it will be too soft.

I split the mixture into three separate bowls and coloured each one. Remember and add the food colouring a little at a time, if you add too much then you are stuck with that colour. If you add a little then give it a mix and repeat you can easily build up to the colour you want.

Pop the buttercream into a piping bag with a large round nozzle and leave it to one side.

Levelling and Pinata Centre

Level the cakes, by cutting away any dome on top, and cut in half so you now have four cake layers. Four cake layers might seem like a lot, but with a drip cake and a pinata cake, I find it to be the perfect height. You can get a pretty good drip around the edges without it touching the bottom of the cake and the centre can be filled with lots of treats.

I used a 5” round cutter and cut out the centre of 3 of the cakes. These will be the bottom three layers the one that is still whole will be your top layer.

Putting it All Together

This cake has a little bit of everything, a drip, pinata and a multicoloured buttercream filling.

Place your first cake onto your serving board and pipe a ring around the edge of the cake with your purple buttercream, then next to that pipe a circle of orange and then green. Repeat until you reach the centre of the cake.

Place the next two layers on and repeat this. I decided to mix it up and used the colours in a different order each time.

Once you have the three layers of cake stacked you can fill the centre with any Halloween treats you want. I used, gummy brains, gummy worms, Goo Heads, M&Ms, some Halloween sprinkles, edible eyes and spider webs. Fill the centre to the top then put your final cake on top.

Now go around the side of your cake and pipe the buttercream. The easiest way to do this is to start from the bottom and work your way up. I piped the green buttercream around the bottom of the cakes. Add purple in the middle and orange buttercream on top.

Now using your cake smoother go around the sides of the cake and smooth. You don’t want to scrape the buttercream off, just to smooth it into your cake.

If you find there are any bumps or gaps fill these in using your buttercream and smooth again. Repeat until your cake is completely smooth.

Any buttercream on the top of the cake you can use an angled palette knife to smooth any leftover buttercream onto the top of the cake.

Chocolate Drip Cake

To make the chocolate drip I used dark chocolate, but milk would also work perfectly for this cake. The easiest way to make the ganache is to warm up the double cream in the microwave. It shouldn’t be boiling but it should be cold either.

Okay, that is vague. Sorry. Basically, when you remove the double cream from the microwave, there should be steam coming from it.

Add the chocolate in and leave it for 5 minutes. After five minutes, stir the ganache mixture until smooth.

If there are any stubborn lumps of chocolate that won’t melt pop the entire bowl back into the microwave, and microwave for 10-20 seconds and mix again.

Add the chocolate ganache to a piping bag either with a small round nozzle or if you are using a disposable piping bag snip the tip of the bag off.

Go around the edge of your cake gently squeezing the bag and encouraging the chocolate to drip. The longer you hold the bag in one place, the longer the drip will be.

Pipe any leftover chocolate onto the top of your cake and smooth.

Before you pipe the leftover buttercream onto the cake you will need to let the chocolate drip set. Pop it into the fridge for 30-40 minutes to set.

Finish the cake by piping any leftover buttercream on top and decorating with as many Halloween treats and sprinkles as possible.

Alternatives

If you want to make this cake a vanilla cake, remove the cocoa powder and replace it with self-raising flour.

You can use any colour of buttercream you fancy.

Equipment

Purple Food Colouring

Orange Food Colouring

*I earn a small amount of money if you buy any of these products. You will not be charged anything extra for this. Thank you for supporting A Spoonful of Vanilla.

Pin it For Later!

If you do have any questions about this Halloween Drip Cake or any other recipes on my blog you can contact me either by sending me a DM on social media or an email. You can find all my details on the left-hand side of this page.

Print Recipe