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5 from 10 votes

Spiders Web Cake

This Spiders Web Cake is a delicious Halloween themed vanilla cake, with purple, green and orange cake layers. Decorated with black chocolate food colouring and marshmallow spider’s web.
Servings: 16 people
Author: Sarah Mark

Ingredients

For the Cake

  • 425 g Caster Sugar
  • 425 g Unsalted Butter or Stork
  • 425 g Self-Raising Flour
  • 8 Large Eggs
  • 1 tsp Vanilla Extract
  • 1 tsp Baking Powder
  • Green, Orange, Purple Food Colouring

For the Buttercream

  • 1 kg Icing Sugar
  • 500 g Unsalted Butter
  • 1 tsp Vanilla Extract
  • 50 g Cocoa Powder
  • Black Food Colouring

For the Decoration

  • 100 g White Marshmallows

Instructions

To Make the Cake

  • Preheat the oven to 170C (150C Fan). Line three 8 ”cake tins with greaseproof paper and leave to one side.
  • In a large bowl, whisk together the sugar and butter until light and fluffy.
  • Add in the flour, eggs, vanilla extract, baking powder and cocoa powder. Whisk until all combined.
  • Split the mixture into three seperate bowls. Add the green food colouring to one bowl, the purple to another and the orange to another and mix. Until the cake batter reaches your desired colour.
  • Pour the mixture into the individual cake tins and bake in the oven for 35-40 minutes. You will know they are ready when they are springy to touch.
  • Leave them to cool in the cake tin for 15-20 minutes and then remove and put them on a wire rack to cool fully.

To Make the Buttercream

  • Once your cakes have cooled make the chocolate buttercream.
  • In a bowl mix together the icing sugar, butter, vanilla and cocoa powder until combined. The mixture will be quite thick.
  • Add in the black food colouring and mix. It will go a dark grey colour to begin with but don't worry it will depelop into black.
  • Put your buttercream into a piping bag with a large round nozzle and leave to one side.

To Decorate

  • Place your first cake on your serving plate and pipe the buttercream on top. Smooth using a palette knife, don’t worry is any of the buttercream splodges out the side. Repeat until your cake is stacked.
  • Using your cake smoother smooth around the sides of the cake. Don’t worry if you can see the cake through the buttercream, this is just the crumb coat. We will cover the cake soon.
  • If there are any gaps, pipe buttercream into the gaps and then smooth again using your cake smoother.
  • Once there are no gaps in your cake pop it into the fridge until the buttercream has hardened. Keep your buttercream in the piping bag and leave to one side.
  • Once the buttercream has hardened, pipe the remaining buttercream onto the top of the cake and around the sides.
  • Using your smoother, smooth around the sides, if there are any gaps fill these with the buttercream and continue to smooth around the sides until the cake is smooth. You will most likely take some of the buttercream off the cake if you do pop this back into your bowl.
  • Using a palette knife smooth any buttercream into the top of the cake so you have nice sharp edges.
  • Put the marshmallows into a heatproof bowl and put it into the microwave on 20-second bursts until they are sticky and stringy.
  • Nowthis is the fun/messy part. It is quite hard to explain but if you put yourfingers into the marshmallow and pick up lumps of it, the marshmallow shouldstretch, wrap it around your cake
  • Finish your cake off by using edible eyes or spiders.

Notes

  • This cake will last in an airtight container for 3-4 days.