**The Art of Creating a Jack-o'-Lantern Cake**

As I stood in front of my kitchen counter, I couldn't help but feel a sense of excitement and creativity. I was about to embark on a project that would showcase my skills as a cake decorator: creating a jack-o'-lantern cake. With black chocolate cake and bright orange buttercream in between, this cake was going to be a masterpiece. I began by piping the chocolate cake with compound chocolate, carefully smoothing out the edges to create a seamless surface.

Next, I used a small spatula to pipe on the orange buttercream, making sure to cover the bottom half of the cake as if it had been dipped in caramel. As I worked, I couldn't help but feel a sense of pride at how my creation was shaping up. The cake was starting to take on a life of its own, and I couldn't wait to see the finished product. With the cakes complete, I turned my attention to decorating them with whatever I desired.

For this project, I decided to use dowels as sticks for the cake. These dowels were thicker than what I typically used to support cakes, but they were perfect for creating a sturdy foundation for my jack-o'-lantern cakes. I tied matching ribbons around each stick to add a finishing touch and make them blend in with the rest of the design.

As I worked on decorating the cakes, I couldn't help but feel a sense of excitement at how they were turning out. The bright orange buttercream was perfectly balanced against the black chocolate cake, creating a striking visual effect that was sure to impress. With the cakes complete, I turned my attention to carving them into jack-o'-lantern shapes.

To create this illusion, I used a combination of carving and crum coating techniques. First, I marked the halfway point on each cake and carved out a circle using a specialized tool. Next, I flipped the cake over and repeated the process, ensuring that both sides were symmetrical and even. Finally, I chilled the cakes to set the carved design in place.

With the jack-o'-lantern cakes complete, I moved on to creating the handle. Using floral wire and gum paste, I rolled out a band of black fondant and carefully placed it around the wire stem. To create a seamless finish, I brushed the gum paste with clear piping gel and trimmed the excess fondant away.

As I worked on adding details to the jack-o'-lantern face, I couldn't help but feel a sense of pride at how the design was coming together. Using a veining tool, I created delicate impressions in the fondant, adding texture and depth to the design. To complete the look, I used extruded orange fondant to fill in any gaps or seams.

For the final touches, I rolled out thin strips of black fondant and carefully cut out small pieces that would serve as the eyes and mouth of the jack-o'-lantern. By using these small pieces, I was able to create a more delicate and nuanced expression, one that added to the overall charm of the design.

Finally, with the face complete, I filled the jack-o'-lantern cake with candy to create a colorful and enticing treat. As I stepped back to admire my handiwork, I couldn't help but feel a sense of satisfaction at what I had created. The combination of bright orange buttercream, black chocolate cake, and delicate details had come together to form a truly unique and eye-catching jack-o'-lantern cake.

**Tips for Creating Your Own Jack-o'-Lantern Cake**

For those looking to attempt this project, here are a few tips that may be helpful:

* Use a combination of carved and crum coated techniques to create a seamless finish.

* Consider using dowels or other supports to keep the cakes stable while you decorate them.

* Don't be afraid to experiment with different materials and techniques - the key to creating a truly unique design is to think outside the box.

**Ranking the Difficulty Level of Halloween Cakes**

If I had to rank these three cakes in terms of difficulty, I would say that the jack-o'-lantern cake is the most challenging. Its symmetrical shape and precision required make it a true test of skill for even experienced bakers.

The candy apple cake comes in second, mainly because of its size and complexity. While it may not require the same level of precision as the jack-o'-lantern cake, it still demands attention to detail and a steady hand.

The beginner version, which would be the witch hat cake, is by far the easiest to make. With its irregular shape and simpler design requirements, this cake is perfect for those just starting out in the world of cake decorating.

**Show Us Your Creations**

If you're feeling inspired to create your own jack-o'-lantern cake or candy apple, please don't hesitate to reach out! Share your creations with us on social media using a relevant hashtag, and we may feature them on our channel. Happy baking!

"WEBVTTKind: captionsLanguage: enit's Halloween month everyone I thought we should take this week to look back at some of my Halloween Classics and you guys can decide which cake you're going to make so of course I cak a witch hat who is that so one thing I love about witch hats and witches in general is witches are far more stylish than leprechauns I'm really throwing leprechaun shade you can decorate a witch hat any way you want velvet witch velvet but a buckle some rhinestone right I don't think I'm this wi but you do need cake rounds that get sort of consecutively smaller so this is helping you to build a cone shape I chose to make this cake black chocolate cake cuz I think it's really dramatic it's still delicious and even though you add black food coloring you can't taste it in the cake and then I had fun by making the buttercream in between orange you could do green you could do purple you could do anything you want you don't want it to look like a traffic pylon you're not trying to carve a perfect cone you know what I'm saying so it could tilt to the side it could tilt to the other side it could be straight up it could flop over a bit whatever you want be the witch you want to be so you build up the cone you carve it and then you Crum coat and chill ice and chill stand and now what you need to do is wrap the cake so I'm not going to say it's a beginner cake please don't say that but I get in trouble whenever I suggest this please don't think that when a cake looks like this you could drape fondant over it because the top is so much Slimmer and pointier than the bottom the fondant is naturally going to want to rip just from the weight of itself so don't do that and the truth is this hat has a seam hats have seams so it's natural so this way what you can do is roll out your fondant and drape it around the cone and then cut a seam on the back and if you have trouble with it and your seam doesn't look great then make it a busted witch hat she fell off her broom she got into a witch fight you don't know let me put this back on that being said now oh this is my favorite part where I made a fond of paste and I did some seam hiding now if I was a witch I'd rather just say a spell and use my wand and hide the seam but I can't really reveal that on YouTube can I no so I did it the hard way once you've wrapped your cake in the fondant and you've cleaned up the seam you can make the brim of the hat like can we just talk about the fact that I wore these glasses and the wig why are you wearing glasses cuz this is how to cake it I decided to create a purple striped pattern going horizontally up the cake so what I did is I rolled out some purple fondant nice and thin into sheets I like to put those sheets on cakeboards and then I use a ruler and a sharp pairing knife to cut these stripes and I glue them to the cake with a little bit of water brushed on the back and I used one of the fondant strips as a spacer oh I'm making Whimsical flowers you know what when I was making the fairy cake and I made my Whimsical flowers I was thinking what cake have I made this on on the channel I did it a lot in the early 2000s when Mad Hatter cakes were really popular but now I'm watching witch hat and I realized I made those flowers for the witch hat I textured the brim of the Hat even further before adding my cake with some black sanding sugar so I brushed the base of the brim minus the part that's going to be underneath the cake with clear piping gel and then I sprinkled on sanding sugar which is really cool she's a glittery witch maybe she's a disco witch I wasn't entirely happy with the edge of the brim of the hat so I happened to have a mold that kind of looks like a strand of pearls but they're flat on the back I pressed black fondant into that mold and created several strands and then I glued them to the edge of the brim so she's a fancy disco winch and now I can add my gloss Whimsical black flowers to the base of the Hat as well as some jewels that I made also with a mold and just add them here and there you can have fun you can decorate your witch hat however you want if the decorations are heavy you can use a too thick or raw spaghetti to help you keep them in place and then I added a feather I added a non-edible decoration a nice black feather if I was a witch I'd definitely have a feather that's why I chose this hat you know what I mean cuz it doubles as a wand could like take it out and cast spells the next Halloween cake is my Halloween candy apple cake I actually made three of these cakes I baked my cakes in spear pans I decided to make vanilla cake cuz it's sort of similar to the color of the inside of an apple remove it from the was that your foot moving the camera yes remove each half put it together and then you can start to carve out the shape of an apple now again I'm not going to say this is a skin or cake but apples are a very forgiving shape because technically they come in a whole bunch of different shapes so you really just got to taper it um and then make sure to carve a nice little Valley in the top where the stem would be then you can glue your cakes together with some buttercream ganache anything you like and that way the two halves of the apples stay together and then you're going to crumb coat and chill the apples and then you're going to ice the apples now this is a cake where the icing doesn't have to be completely perfect because again and apples aren't perfect so if the skin looked super perfect on the outside that would be weird it would look like a manufactured plastic Apple I'm doing a golden apple a red apple and a green apple why do we have Jeremy oh didn't a fan draw Jeremy wow and what you're going to do is roll out all three colors of fondant drape your fondant on top and smooth it and where the valley is for the core you have to Gent you can gently poke a hole with like a pin or a toothpick to release the air and gently sort of coax the fondant into that Valley okay I love the color of the green fondant I was very proud of that now you have three apple cakes golden green and red it doesn't quite look like an apple because it's too matte so what we're going to do is pick some food coloring that looks natural and you just want to enhance the golden yellow color the red color and the green color of the Apple so we're going to paint these apple cakes we only have to paint the top half because the bottom half is going to be covered in caramel and candies oh I used white food coloring look look at that why am I acting like you're not going to show it to them I love the way this looks so I'm going to melt my compound chocolate put it in a Piping Bag and that way I can pipe sort of halfway or a little more than halfway up each apple cake and just pipe it on and as I pipe it on I can smooth it out with a small spatula and really cover the bottom half of the apples as if they have been dipped in Caramel once I've done this to all three cakes I can start to decorate the cakes with whatever I desire of course because these are Candy Apples they need sticks for the sticks I am using dowels these dowels are thicker than what I use to tear cakes but they're the perfect size and they come 12 in in length which was perfect for the apple cake and then I tied a matching ribbon oh look I'm eating cake wow not really scary though it's a really cute Jackal Lantern right once my cakes are Jackal Lantern cake this is one of my favorite cakes period on the channel I made this cake with black chocolate cake and a really bright orange buttercream in between because let's face it the jack-o'-lantern buckets that you use to trick-or treat are quite bright orange oh look at me so because can I get the Jackal Lantern not only do I have a jackal Lantern we have mini jack-o-lanterns wait you don't have a jack-o lantern necklace because I do because this jackolantern unlike a real pumpkin is completely symmetrical I need to make sure that I can carve it as perfectly as can be I Mark the halfway mark and then I Mark a circle on top and I carve from that Circle to the halfway mark then I flip the cake over and do the same thing and this way I know that I'm carving evenly normally I just go around the cake and carve and that's fine when the shape doesn't have to be perfect kind of like the witch hat or the Apple but in this case because it's manufactured it is perfect so I want to keep that look and then once I'm happy with the shape I Crum coat the cake and chill and then I ice it and chill to make the handle I used a floral wire I rolled out a band of black gum paste brushed it with clear piping gel placed the wire on top and then I trimmed the font it and wrap it around the wire the handle on this thing is quite flimsy like if you got a lot of candy I feel like this would just break guys I rolled out fondant and I only covered it halfway why did I do that is there a seam in the bucket why would I intentionally oh there is I intentionally made the seam I wanted it to be true to form and look manufactured so I rolled out vant covered one half cut seams at exactly sort of the halfway point on either side covered the other side and then trimmed the fondant to meet it and then I used a circle cutter to perfectly cut out the top Circle to create an opening wow look at her sometimes I'm impressed when she does something better than I do it now I shouldn't be impressed I should be concerned now I'm going to create all of the indents in the Jackal Lantern so what I'm going to do is use a veining tool to just imprint them into the fondant even though they're present they're not extremely deep which is why I didn't carve them out of the cake what am I doing I I play extruded orange fondant and I used the grass face plate so it has several holes of the same size then when I got a strip that was long enough I covered the seams with two pieces of really thin clay extruded fondant so there's more of the seam I accentuated a seam now it's time to work on the Jacko Lantern face this is the best part roll out the black fondant thin or gum paste cut out the pieces I'm also using using the pieces of paper to cut openings in the orange fondant this is classic right this is like the blue steel of Jacko lanterns right like this is the trademark Jackal Lantern smile so I'm going to stick with that but you can do whatever you want and this is the most fun part you can fill the Jackal Lantern cake with any candy you want so here are three classic Halloween cakes for you if I had to rank them in terms of difficulty I would say Jackal Lantern is the most difficult uh because it's manufactured and it looks the most perfect Which hat comes in second mainly because of its size and candy apple would be the beginner version of the three cakes in this Vis so if you're going to make one of these cakes please show us uh let us know below or tag me on Instagram and I will see you next weekit's Halloween month everyone I thought we should take this week to look back at some of my Halloween Classics and you guys can decide which cake you're going to make so of course I cak a witch hat who is that so one thing I love about witch hats and witches in general is witches are far more stylish than leprechauns I'm really throwing leprechaun shade you can decorate a witch hat any way you want velvet witch velvet but a buckle some rhinestone right I don't think I'm this wi but you do need cake rounds that get sort of consecutively smaller so this is helping you to build a cone shape I chose to make this cake black chocolate cake cuz I think it's really dramatic it's still delicious and even though you add black food coloring you can't taste it in the cake and then I had fun by making the buttercream in between orange you could do green you could do purple you could do anything you want you don't want it to look like a traffic pylon you're not trying to carve a perfect cone you know what I'm saying so it could tilt to the side it could tilt to the other side it could be straight up it could flop over a bit whatever you want be the witch you want to be so you build up the cone you carve it and then you Crum coat and chill ice and chill stand and now what you need to do is wrap the cake so I'm not going to say it's a beginner cake please don't say that but I get in trouble whenever I suggest this please don't think that when a cake looks like this you could drape fondant over it because the top is so much Slimmer and pointier than the bottom the fondant is naturally going to want to rip just from the weight of itself so don't do that and the truth is this hat has a seam hats have seams so it's natural so this way what you can do is roll out your fondant and drape it around the cone and then cut a seam on the back and if you have trouble with it and your seam doesn't look great then make it a busted witch hat she fell off her broom she got into a witch fight you don't know let me put this back on that being said now oh this is my favorite part where I made a fond of paste and I did some seam hiding now if I was a witch I'd rather just say a spell and use my wand and hide the seam but I can't really reveal that on YouTube can I no so I did it the hard way once you've wrapped your cake in the fondant and you've cleaned up the seam you can make the brim of the hat like can we just talk about the fact that I wore these glasses and the wig why are you wearing glasses cuz this is how to cake it I decided to create a purple striped pattern going horizontally up the cake so what I did is I rolled out some purple fondant nice and thin into sheets I like to put those sheets on cakeboards and then I use a ruler and a sharp pairing knife to cut these stripes and I glue them to the cake with a little bit of water brushed on the back and I used one of the fondant strips as a spacer oh I'm making Whimsical flowers you know what when I was making the fairy cake and I made my Whimsical flowers I was thinking what cake have I made this on on the channel I did it a lot in the early 2000s when Mad Hatter cakes were really popular but now I'm watching witch hat and I realized I made those flowers for the witch hat I textured the brim of the Hat even further before adding my cake with some black sanding sugar so I brushed the base of the brim minus the part that's going to be underneath the cake with clear piping gel and then I sprinkled on sanding sugar which is really cool she's a glittery witch maybe she's a disco witch I wasn't entirely happy with the edge of the brim of the hat so I happened to have a mold that kind of looks like a strand of pearls but they're flat on the back I pressed black fondant into that mold and created several strands and then I glued them to the edge of the brim so she's a fancy disco winch and now I can add my gloss Whimsical black flowers to the base of the Hat as well as some jewels that I made also with a mold and just add them here and there you can have fun you can decorate your witch hat however you want if the decorations are heavy you can use a too thick or raw spaghetti to help you keep them in place and then I added a feather I added a non-edible decoration a nice black feather if I was a witch I'd definitely have a feather that's why I chose this hat you know what I mean cuz it doubles as a wand could like take it out and cast spells the next Halloween cake is my Halloween candy apple cake I actually made three of these cakes I baked my cakes in spear pans I decided to make vanilla cake cuz it's sort of similar to the color of the inside of an apple remove it from the was that your foot moving the camera yes remove each half put it together and then you can start to carve out the shape of an apple now again I'm not going to say this is a skin or cake but apples are a very forgiving shape because technically they come in a whole bunch of different shapes so you really just got to taper it um and then make sure to carve a nice little Valley in the top where the stem would be then you can glue your cakes together with some buttercream ganache anything you like and that way the two halves of the apples stay together and then you're going to crumb coat and chill the apples and then you're going to ice the apples now this is a cake where the icing doesn't have to be completely perfect because again and apples aren't perfect so if the skin looked super perfect on the outside that would be weird it would look like a manufactured plastic Apple I'm doing a golden apple a red apple and a green apple why do we have Jeremy oh didn't a fan draw Jeremy wow and what you're going to do is roll out all three colors of fondant drape your fondant on top and smooth it and where the valley is for the core you have to Gent you can gently poke a hole with like a pin or a toothpick to release the air and gently sort of coax the fondant into that Valley okay I love the color of the green fondant I was very proud of that now you have three apple cakes golden green and red it doesn't quite look like an apple because it's too matte so what we're going to do is pick some food coloring that looks natural and you just want to enhance the golden yellow color the red color and the green color of the Apple so we're going to paint these apple cakes we only have to paint the top half because the bottom half is going to be covered in caramel and candies oh I used white food coloring look look at that why am I acting like you're not going to show it to them I love the way this looks so I'm going to melt my compound chocolate put it in a Piping Bag and that way I can pipe sort of halfway or a little more than halfway up each apple cake and just pipe it on and as I pipe it on I can smooth it out with a small spatula and really cover the bottom half of the apples as if they have been dipped in Caramel once I've done this to all three cakes I can start to decorate the cakes with whatever I desire of course because these are Candy Apples they need sticks for the sticks I am using dowels these dowels are thicker than what I use to tear cakes but they're the perfect size and they come 12 in in length which was perfect for the apple cake and then I tied a matching ribbon oh look I'm eating cake wow not really scary though it's a really cute Jackal Lantern right once my cakes are Jackal Lantern cake this is one of my favorite cakes period on the channel I made this cake with black chocolate cake and a really bright orange buttercream in between because let's face it the jack-o'-lantern buckets that you use to trick-or treat are quite bright orange oh look at me so because can I get the Jackal Lantern not only do I have a jackal Lantern we have mini jack-o-lanterns wait you don't have a jack-o lantern necklace because I do because this jackolantern unlike a real pumpkin is completely symmetrical I need to make sure that I can carve it as perfectly as can be I Mark the halfway mark and then I Mark a circle on top and I carve from that Circle to the halfway mark then I flip the cake over and do the same thing and this way I know that I'm carving evenly normally I just go around the cake and carve and that's fine when the shape doesn't have to be perfect kind of like the witch hat or the Apple but in this case because it's manufactured it is perfect so I want to keep that look and then once I'm happy with the shape I Crum coat the cake and chill and then I ice it and chill to make the handle I used a floral wire I rolled out a band of black gum paste brushed it with clear piping gel placed the wire on top and then I trimmed the font it and wrap it around the wire the handle on this thing is quite flimsy like if you got a lot of candy I feel like this would just break guys I rolled out fondant and I only covered it halfway why did I do that is there a seam in the bucket why would I intentionally oh there is I intentionally made the seam I wanted it to be true to form and look manufactured so I rolled out vant covered one half cut seams at exactly sort of the halfway point on either side covered the other side and then trimmed the fondant to meet it and then I used a circle cutter to perfectly cut out the top Circle to create an opening wow look at her sometimes I'm impressed when she does something better than I do it now I shouldn't be impressed I should be concerned now I'm going to create all of the indents in the Jackal Lantern so what I'm going to do is use a veining tool to just imprint them into the fondant even though they're present they're not extremely deep which is why I didn't carve them out of the cake what am I doing I I play extruded orange fondant and I used the grass face plate so it has several holes of the same size then when I got a strip that was long enough I covered the seams with two pieces of really thin clay extruded fondant so there's more of the seam I accentuated a seam now it's time to work on the Jacko Lantern face this is the best part roll out the black fondant thin or gum paste cut out the pieces I'm also using using the pieces of paper to cut openings in the orange fondant this is classic right this is like the blue steel of Jacko lanterns right like this is the trademark Jackal Lantern smile so I'm going to stick with that but you can do whatever you want and this is the most fun part you can fill the Jackal Lantern cake with any candy you want so here are three classic Halloween cakes for you if I had to rank them in terms of difficulty I would say Jackal Lantern is the most difficult uh because it's manufactured and it looks the most perfect Which hat comes in second mainly because of its size and candy apple would be the beginner version of the three cakes in this Vis so if you're going to make one of these cakes please show us uh let us know below or tag me on Instagram and I will see you next week\n"