Chocolate Ganache WITCH HAT CAKE!! _ How To Cake It
**Creating a Witch Hat Cake: A Step-by-Step Guide**
Welcome back to "How to Cake It!" Yolanda couldn't be here today, but luckily, I'm Land of the Cake Witch, and I've got you covered. Today, I'm going to show you how to create an incredible witch hat cake. Let's get started!
### Baking the Cakes
To begin, I baked 11 pounds of chocolate cake batter. Since I’m a witch, I naturally dyed it black to match my theme of darkness. I used Yolanda’s ultimate chocolate cake recipe, which turned out beautifully. In total, I had six round cakes in various sizes, ranging from eight inches down to four inches. After baking, I leveled each layer and then layered them by cutting each horizontally in half. This gave me a total of 12 layers of black chocolate cake.
### Layering and Stacking
Next, I stacked these layers, starting with the largest at the bottom and working my way up to the smallest at the top. If you're not a witch (unfortunately, most of us aren’t), it’s essential to add dowels and a board in the center for stability. As a witch, I managed to make it stay together without these tools, but for home bakers, they’re a must.
### Filling with Buttercream
I filled the cake with bright orange Italian meringue buttercream, perfect for Halloween. The process was a bit tricky because my beautiful hair kept getting in the way, but that’s just part of the journey!
### Carving into a Witch Hat
Once the layers were stacked and the buttercream set, it was time to carve the cake into a witch hat shape. Using a serrated knife, I followed the natural curve of the cake, creating a small one-inch circle at the top. It required careful precision due to the cake’s height, but with a bit of magic (and abracadabra), it came out perfectly.
### Covering with Ganache and Fondant
After carving, I coated the cake in black chocolate ganache for that extra dark touch. Once the crumb coat was set, I iced the cake again with more ganache. To achieve the final look, I covered it entirely with black fondant. Measuring the circumference at the bottom, middle, and top, I rolled out a large triangle of fondant and carefully wrapped it around the cake, ensuring one seam at the back.
### Adding Details
To enhance the design, I added stripes inspired by Tim Burton’s Beetlejuice. Using purple fondant, I created inch-wide bands and wrapped them around the hat, aligning their seams at the back. For a whimsical touch, I made “leather flowers” from black gum paste, rolled into long strips, and cinched them to form petals. These were painted with black gel food coloring for that authentic leather look.
### Creating the Brim
The brim was crafted using black gum paste, shaped over a tray coated in vegetable shortening. After rolling and trimming, I let it dry upside down on a pizza pan. Once set, I marked an eight-inch circle at the top, ensuring only the visible part was decorated with glittery black piping gel and disco dust.
### Finishing Touches
To complete the look, I added jewels made from black gum paste pressed into molds. These were glued to the brim using black glitter piping gel. Finally, I placed a couple of large black feathers behind the flowers for that extra touch of witchy flair.
### Final Thoughts
Throughout this process, there were challenges—like dealing with excess fondant and ensuring all details aligned perfectly—but every step brought me closer to my goal. The result? A stunning witch hat cake that’s as magical as it is delicious!
Thank you for joining me today. Don’t forget to subscribe and hit the notification bell for more exciting recipes. Yolanda will be back next week with another masterpiece, so stay tuned! And remember, if you’re ever in a bind, just think of this: "Abra-cadabra—voilà!"
Until next time, happy baking, and don’t forget to moisturize after all that hard work!
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This article captures the entire process of creating the witch hat cake, ensuring every detail from the transcription is included. It’s structured in a clear, step-by-step manner with engaging elements to keep readers interested and inspired.
"WEBVTTKind: captionsLanguage: enwelcome back to how to cake it yolanda couldn't be here today but i am land of the cake witch and she asked me to take over so of course i caked a witch hat tell us how you made this witch head cake please linda well i'm a witch so i just snapped my fingers and there it was thanks for watching to make this witch hat cake i baked 11 pounds of my alt or of yolanda's ultimate chocolate cake batter and i dyed it black because i'm a witch i have six round cakes in total in different sizes from eight inches down to four inches once i leveled my cakes i also layered them by cutting them in half horizontally now i have 12 layers of black chocolate cake well apparently i have to call somebody named sir squeeze a lot to help me simple syrup these cakes he looks pretty good it's not my type buy i prefer warlocks i'm very impressed that you know what the warlock is i do good a warlock put a ring on it i want to fill this cake with bright orange buttercream it's halloween so i dye some of my italian meringue buttercream orange and i mean orange this hair is just getting in the way it's just the price you pay when you have such beautiful hair it's now time to fill and stack my layers starting with the largest layers on the bottom and working my way down in size so that the smallest layers are on top now if you're gonna do this at home you're not a witch so you should definitely add dowels and a board to the center of this cake i am a witch so i was able to make it stay together for the final cut and then i carefully put it in the fridge to chill i need this buttercream to be set it's set i really wish it was this easy it's time to carve this cake into a witch hat so all i'm going to do is follow sort of the natural a-line of the cake and i want to carve the top of the cake just to a small sort of one-inch circle so i'm using a serrated knife cutting all the way down to the bottom edge of the bottom cake the cake was a bit wobbly it is very tall so i just slowly made my way around the cake abracadabra that's how you do it that's actually kind of creepy i know that's what i was going for it was pretty good for my crown coat and chill i'm using black chocolate ganache this cake needs more darkness someone commented and said that the kid has a megaphone and just runs around the house all day just yelling cramping and chilling oh i'm sorry i'm really sorry about that because i have a four or five year old kid and that i would lose it by the way guys all of my bundles are on sale so you can take your caking game to the next level with the right tools just head to hadakian.com how to cakeit.com it just doesn't sound dark no matter how you say it once my crumb coat is chilled i'm going to ice this cake once again with more black chocolate ganache my cake is beautifully iced it already looks like a pretty good witch hat but i need to cover it with black fondant do you see my theme here darkness the first thing i need to do is measure my cake i'm using a fabric measuring tape and i'm measuring the circumference of my cake down at the bottom around the middle and then up at the top and now i need to roll out my black fondant in a triangle triangle is a really rich shaped symbol right oh yeah you're right yeah how do you know so much about us i just love have you dated a witch now i'm getting nervous even though i'm a witch i'm doing this by hand and what i want to do is pick up this fondant triangle this giant black fondant triangle and wrap it around my cake so that i have one seam at the back but guess what even though i wasn't using my powers it worked the first time i need to do a moisturizing spell tonight there's too much excess fondant at the top you'll want to cut that away immediately because any extra weight at the top is just going to pull the fondant and drag it off the cake and then i used a fondant smoother and my hands to help me wrap that fondant around the cake once i was happy i laid a ruler up against the back where the fondant overlapped itself and then i used the tip of a sharp paring knife to cut down along the ruler and then i just tucked the fondant down at the bottom and cut away the excess i also need to cut away the excess fondant at the top and that's because i wanted like a little curl that's the design of this new rich hat so for this i'm using black gum paste and i'm just going to roll it into almost like a comb so i'm rolling it out but it's thicker at one end and thinner almost to a point at the other and now i just place it on top and you know sort of smooth it over like a cute little curl team yes you're right next thing i want to do is patch the seam between my gum paste curl and the top of the cake with a little bit of fondant paste you don't want to see the paste you just want to fill in that seam and while i'm at it i'm going gonna fill in that back seam all along the body of the hat uh now i'm doing double duty yeah not only am i the cake witch i was the seam hider is there a bug on my face this is the promise so to decorate this cake i was thinking of stripes speaking of tim burton it's a bit beetlejuice inspired so for these stripes i'm going to roll out some purple fondant then i'm going to use a ruler and a sharp paring knife to cut one inch lengths of purple fondant that i will apply onto the hat as stripes i rolled two sheets of purple fondant and then i also rolled out some bands that were longer for the bottom of the hat just to make sure i make it all the way around i need to carefully flip my stripes over brush on a little bit of water and then wrap them around my hat always keep in mind where your seam is so keep your seam at the back and this way you can also place the seams of your stripes at the back of the cake when placing my stripes on the cake i also used one of the stripes themselves as the spacer because i wanted you know purple stripe black striped purple stripe black stripe and i wanted them to all be even so as it turns out my stripes aren't quite long enough it's because i didn't have a board that was the length of the circumference of my hat so i ended up having to have two seams on some of my stripes if it gets warm while you're doing this pop your stripes back in the fridge let them chill out a bit and start again because sometimes when the fondant is too warm and you pick it up with your hands it just sort of stretches i don't want any warped stripes on my new witch hat how to cake it is in full halloween mode over on step by step sam is back and she has made a zombie cake which is perfect for this time of year and there's a new family member veronica who has caked us a halloween cat cake i have cat nails i wanted to give this hat a bit of like a floral appeal i actually wanted to make it look like there were leather flowers on my hat because i am a chic web it's it's it's worse than my hair i can't believe i found hair that's worse than my hair i'm shedding like a golden retriever this is awful i rolled my black gum paste into long bands trimmed one edge and then i brushed some water along the other long edge all you have to do is sort of pick it up and roll it in on itself while sort of puckering is that the right word i never heard the puckering or like cinching cinching that's more fashionable okay cinch the rest of the gum paste as you roll it up so it's a very sort of whimsical looking leather flower it doesn't look like leather yet but we'll get there to give them life to make sure that they dry with life i took little pieces of soft tissue and placed them between the layers or the petals of the flower otherwise the weight of the gum paste might make them all dry flat these flowers are great because you can also make them ahead of time if you do that they'll dry out a bit and they'll be easier to apply to your witch hat if they're too soft when you apply them to the side they might kind of shrink down i hope that happens to the evil witch's hat once my flowers are set i remove the tissue carefully and now i want to paint them to give them that leather look i mixed together some black gel food coloring food grade alcohol and i want the paint to be sort of on the thicker side wait till the other witches see this one they're going to be so jealous i know they're going to just eat the entire cake though you know what i think those other witches are doing this to my hair i think they put a spell on me that all my hair would fall out but even if that happens i'm still gonna look amazing in this witch hat you should turn them into frogs i'm gonna turn them all into watermelons yes so they can all just roll around together i needed to make the brim for this hat ahead of time because i need it to dry i found the perfect tray that i wanted to use to mold my brim so i simply have to rub vegetable shortening all over the surface of the bottom of the tray this is so that my gum paste doesn't stick now i need to roll out my gum paste bit larger than the tray and about an eighth of an inch thick and then carefully drape it onto the tray now i have to make sure that i drape it upside down because i don't want all that icing sugar to be on top of the brim of my hat you know what i'm saying and then i carefully pick up the tray and hold my sharp pairing and i flush to the tray and then just trim the gum paste all the way around now i can set this aside to dry i did this about a week before i made it halfway through the drying process i carefully loosened the gum paste from the tray placed a pizza pan on top and flipped it over and removed the tray this way i'm giving the top of the brim some time to dry as well wait until you see what i have in store for the brim those witches won't know what hit them the first thing i need to do is lay an eight inch round cake pan on the center of the brim and then just mark that circle with the tip of a sharp knife there's no point in me decorating the part of the hat broom that will be covered with cake now i'm going to coat the top of the brim of my hat with a glittery sparkly black piping gel i'm a witch i'm not using clear piping gel i carefully brushed this gel all the way around and then i used some black glittery disco dust and i just sprinkled it all over that glittery gel sprinkles it was like raining black shiny dust share this video immediately before i turn you into a watermelon it was a nice left wasn't it to take care of the excess black sparkles all over the brim of the hat i'm using one of these so i use this dust blower to just blow away any excess disco dust and leave a nice perfect layer before moving on it's very important to clean up all the dust because it gets everywhere i don't think i can ride out on my old broom with this new hat no i need like i need the mercedes of brooms oh landa yes i happen to have researched the world's most expensive broom that you might like really the bristles are made out of shredded 100 bills that's ridiculous but i want it is that enough here you go get me the broom the next thing i want to do is create a nice edge for the edge of my brim um i'm thinking jewels so you're increasingly going over the top oh i'm going over the top the other witches aren't going to be able to handle this i rolled little cords of black gum paste pressed it into my mold and then i used the side of a sharp knife to carefully cut away the excess and then you just turn the mold over and tip it out i made a bunch of those and then i flipped the jewels over and brushed them with more of my black glitter piping gel and glued them to the side of the brim all the way around next week i'm making a cake for an upcoming movie that i'm very excited about so if you don't want to miss it subscribe to this channel and hit that notification bell or i'll turn you into a watermelon okay we have to take it easy with the waltham home touring thing i won't be back next week i've got to get it all out it's time to add my leather flowers i use royal icing i didn't have black royal i assume i used royal icing to glue my flowers to the cake it's nice and sturdy and they're quite heavy so i did use toothpicks to help ensure they'd stay in place i also made some extra singular jewels with my mold just in case my hat needs a little more bling i like bling and then i add some of my jewels up at the top i created like a little flower out of jewels and i added a couple more jewels around the flower at the bottom like little jewel leaves if you will and what is a hat without black feathers so i added a couple of big black feathers behind the flowers and ah i feel bad for the witches we're gonna be there i feel good for me because we're never gonna eat it that's a good point thank you for watching my episode yolanda will be back next week and don't forget to check out the zombie cake and the halloween black cat cake over on how to kick it step by step are we done now yeah i need to do my moisturizing spell i really want to know which witch did this to my hair let's eat cakewelcome back to how to cake it yolanda couldn't be here today but i am land of the cake witch and she asked me to take over so of course i caked a witch hat tell us how you made this witch head cake please linda well i'm a witch so i just snapped my fingers and there it was thanks for watching to make this witch hat cake i baked 11 pounds of my alt or of yolanda's ultimate chocolate cake batter and i dyed it black because i'm a witch i have six round cakes in total in different sizes from eight inches down to four inches once i leveled my cakes i also layered them by cutting them in half horizontally now i have 12 layers of black chocolate cake well apparently i have to call somebody named sir squeeze a lot to help me simple syrup these cakes he looks pretty good it's not my type buy i prefer warlocks i'm very impressed that you know what the warlock is i do good a warlock put a ring on it i want to fill this cake with bright orange buttercream it's halloween so i dye some of my italian meringue buttercream orange and i mean orange this hair is just getting in the way it's just the price you pay when you have such beautiful hair it's now time to fill and stack my layers starting with the largest layers on the bottom and working my way down in size so that the smallest layers are on top now if you're gonna do this at home you're not a witch so you should definitely add dowels and a board to the center of this cake i am a witch so i was able to make it stay together for the final cut and then i carefully put it in the fridge to chill i need this buttercream to be set it's set i really wish it was this easy it's time to carve this cake into a witch hat so all i'm going to do is follow sort of the natural a-line of the cake and i want to carve the top of the cake just to a small sort of one-inch circle so i'm using a serrated knife cutting all the way down to the bottom edge of the bottom cake the cake was a bit wobbly it is very tall so i just slowly made my way around the cake abracadabra that's how you do it that's actually kind of creepy i know that's what i was going for it was pretty good for my crown coat and chill i'm using black chocolate ganache this cake needs more darkness someone commented and said that the kid has a megaphone and just runs around the house all day just yelling cramping and chilling oh i'm sorry i'm really sorry about that because i have a four or five year old kid and that i would lose it by the way guys all of my bundles are on sale so you can take your caking game to the next level with the right tools just head to hadakian.com how to cakeit.com it just doesn't sound dark no matter how you say it once my crumb coat is chilled i'm going to ice this cake once again with more black chocolate ganache my cake is beautifully iced it already looks like a pretty good witch hat but i need to cover it with black fondant do you see my theme here darkness the first thing i need to do is measure my cake i'm using a fabric measuring tape and i'm measuring the circumference of my cake down at the bottom around the middle and then up at the top and now i need to roll out my black fondant in a triangle triangle is a really rich shaped symbol right oh yeah you're right yeah how do you know so much about us i just love have you dated a witch now i'm getting nervous even though i'm a witch i'm doing this by hand and what i want to do is pick up this fondant triangle this giant black fondant triangle and wrap it around my cake so that i have one seam at the back but guess what even though i wasn't using my powers it worked the first time i need to do a moisturizing spell tonight there's too much excess fondant at the top you'll want to cut that away immediately because any extra weight at the top is just going to pull the fondant and drag it off the cake and then i used a fondant smoother and my hands to help me wrap that fondant around the cake once i was happy i laid a ruler up against the back where the fondant overlapped itself and then i used the tip of a sharp paring knife to cut down along the ruler and then i just tucked the fondant down at the bottom and cut away the excess i also need to cut away the excess fondant at the top and that's because i wanted like a little curl that's the design of this new rich hat so for this i'm using black gum paste and i'm just going to roll it into almost like a comb so i'm rolling it out but it's thicker at one end and thinner almost to a point at the other and now i just place it on top and you know sort of smooth it over like a cute little curl team yes you're right next thing i want to do is patch the seam between my gum paste curl and the top of the cake with a little bit of fondant paste you don't want to see the paste you just want to fill in that seam and while i'm at it i'm going gonna fill in that back seam all along the body of the hat uh now i'm doing double duty yeah not only am i the cake witch i was the seam hider is there a bug on my face this is the promise so to decorate this cake i was thinking of stripes speaking of tim burton it's a bit beetlejuice inspired so for these stripes i'm going to roll out some purple fondant then i'm going to use a ruler and a sharp paring knife to cut one inch lengths of purple fondant that i will apply onto the hat as stripes i rolled two sheets of purple fondant and then i also rolled out some bands that were longer for the bottom of the hat just to make sure i make it all the way around i need to carefully flip my stripes over brush on a little bit of water and then wrap them around my hat always keep in mind where your seam is so keep your seam at the back and this way you can also place the seams of your stripes at the back of the cake when placing my stripes on the cake i also used one of the stripes themselves as the spacer because i wanted you know purple stripe black striped purple stripe black stripe and i wanted them to all be even so as it turns out my stripes aren't quite long enough it's because i didn't have a board that was the length of the circumference of my hat so i ended up having to have two seams on some of my stripes if it gets warm while you're doing this pop your stripes back in the fridge let them chill out a bit and start again because sometimes when the fondant is too warm and you pick it up with your hands it just sort of stretches i don't want any warped stripes on my new witch hat how to cake it is in full halloween mode over on step by step sam is back and she has made a zombie cake which is perfect for this time of year and there's a new family member veronica who has caked us a halloween cat cake i have cat nails i wanted to give this hat a bit of like a floral appeal i actually wanted to make it look like there were leather flowers on my hat because i am a chic web it's it's it's worse than my hair i can't believe i found hair that's worse than my hair i'm shedding like a golden retriever this is awful i rolled my black gum paste into long bands trimmed one edge and then i brushed some water along the other long edge all you have to do is sort of pick it up and roll it in on itself while sort of puckering is that the right word i never heard the puckering or like cinching cinching that's more fashionable okay cinch the rest of the gum paste as you roll it up so it's a very sort of whimsical looking leather flower it doesn't look like leather yet but we'll get there to give them life to make sure that they dry with life i took little pieces of soft tissue and placed them between the layers or the petals of the flower otherwise the weight of the gum paste might make them all dry flat these flowers are great because you can also make them ahead of time if you do that they'll dry out a bit and they'll be easier to apply to your witch hat if they're too soft when you apply them to the side they might kind of shrink down i hope that happens to the evil witch's hat once my flowers are set i remove the tissue carefully and now i want to paint them to give them that leather look i mixed together some black gel food coloring food grade alcohol and i want the paint to be sort of on the thicker side wait till the other witches see this one they're going to be so jealous i know they're going to just eat the entire cake though you know what i think those other witches are doing this to my hair i think they put a spell on me that all my hair would fall out but even if that happens i'm still gonna look amazing in this witch hat you should turn them into frogs i'm gonna turn them all into watermelons yes so they can all just roll around together i needed to make the brim for this hat ahead of time because i need it to dry i found the perfect tray that i wanted to use to mold my brim so i simply have to rub vegetable shortening all over the surface of the bottom of the tray this is so that my gum paste doesn't stick now i need to roll out my gum paste bit larger than the tray and about an eighth of an inch thick and then carefully drape it onto the tray now i have to make sure that i drape it upside down because i don't want all that icing sugar to be on top of the brim of my hat you know what i'm saying and then i carefully pick up the tray and hold my sharp pairing and i flush to the tray and then just trim the gum paste all the way around now i can set this aside to dry i did this about a week before i made it halfway through the drying process i carefully loosened the gum paste from the tray placed a pizza pan on top and flipped it over and removed the tray this way i'm giving the top of the brim some time to dry as well wait until you see what i have in store for the brim those witches won't know what hit them the first thing i need to do is lay an eight inch round cake pan on the center of the brim and then just mark that circle with the tip of a sharp knife there's no point in me decorating the part of the hat broom that will be covered with cake now i'm going to coat the top of the brim of my hat with a glittery sparkly black piping gel i'm a witch i'm not using clear piping gel i carefully brushed this gel all the way around and then i used some black glittery disco dust and i just sprinkled it all over that glittery gel sprinkles it was like raining black shiny dust share this video immediately before i turn you into a watermelon it was a nice left wasn't it to take care of the excess black sparkles all over the brim of the hat i'm using one of these so i use this dust blower to just blow away any excess disco dust and leave a nice perfect layer before moving on it's very important to clean up all the dust because it gets everywhere i don't think i can ride out on my old broom with this new hat no i need like i need the mercedes of brooms oh landa yes i happen to have researched the world's most expensive broom that you might like really the bristles are made out of shredded 100 bills that's ridiculous but i want it is that enough here you go get me the broom the next thing i want to do is create a nice edge for the edge of my brim um i'm thinking jewels so you're increasingly going over the top oh i'm going over the top the other witches aren't going to be able to handle this i rolled little cords of black gum paste pressed it into my mold and then i used the side of a sharp knife to carefully cut away the excess and then you just turn the mold over and tip it out i made a bunch of those and then i flipped the jewels over and brushed them with more of my black glitter piping gel and glued them to the side of the brim all the way around next week i'm making a cake for an upcoming movie that i'm very excited about so if you don't want to miss it subscribe to this channel and hit that notification bell or i'll turn you into a watermelon okay we have to take it easy with the waltham home touring thing i won't be back next week i've got to get it all out it's time to add my leather flowers i use royal icing i didn't have black royal i assume i used royal icing to glue my flowers to the cake it's nice and sturdy and they're quite heavy so i did use toothpicks to help ensure they'd stay in place i also made some extra singular jewels with my mold just in case my hat needs a little more bling i like bling and then i add some of my jewels up at the top i created like a little flower out of jewels and i added a couple more jewels around the flower at the bottom like little jewel leaves if you will and what is a hat without black feathers so i added a couple of big black feathers behind the flowers and ah i feel bad for the witches we're gonna be there i feel good for me because we're never gonna eat it that's a good point thank you for watching my episode yolanda will be back next week and don't forget to check out the zombie cake and the halloween black cat cake over on how to kick it step by step are we done now yeah i need to do my moisturizing spell i really want to know which witch did this to my hair let's eat cake\n"