Ghoul-Graveyard Cake

I know it’s a bit early for Halloween but my sisters and I are having a get together tomorrow with all our kids and we don’t see each other as often as we would like due to distance. So I thought I would bring Halloween early for the kids and make them this Ghoul-Graveyard Cake which I’ve made many times before and always been a hit with kids and adults alike. This cake is so easy to make, the sponge is a babyfied version of a devil’s food cake and you just bung all the ingredients into a food processor. I did change the frosting and used buttercream instead, only for the reason that I wasn’t too keen on the frosting in the original recipe. The buttercream swirls on like a dream and my favourite part is always decorating the cake with the sprinkles and Halloween themed lollies!

Ghoul-Graveyard Cake

Ingredients
For the cake:
250ml milk
1 teaspoon white wine vinegar
225g plain flour
50g cocoa
2 teaspoons baking powder
one-half teaspoon bicarbonate of soda
200g caster sugar
110g butter or soft margarine
2 eggs
1 teaspoon real vanilla extract

For the buttercream frosting:
150g unsalted butter, softend
300g icing sugar, sifted
Splash of milk
1 teaspoon of vanilla extract
Black colour paste
Black sugar sprinkles
Hallowe'en-themed jelly lollies, at least 1 per child

Method
Preheat the oven to gas mark 3/170C. Grease and line a 23cm springform tin. Mix the milk and vinegar together and set aside.Make sure all your remaining ingredients are at room temperature if you can, but since no one's going to be overly worried about the cake, you shouldn't be either. If the ingredients are cold, the worst that can happen is that the cake will be heavy. But you do need soft butter (or the cake won't mix), so substitute marge if that's not a goer. Put everything for the cake, except the vinegary milk, into a food processor and blitz to mix. Remove the lid, scrape down with a rubber spatula and then put the lid back on and with the motor running, add the vinegary milk.Scrape, spoon or pour the brown batter into the tin and spread to fill it evenly, baking it for 40-45 minutes until it is well risen and springy to the touch. Remove the cooked cake, in its tin, to a rack and leave to cool for about ten minutes, then spring open the tin and let the cake get completely cold.

To make the icing, beat the butter until fluffy, then beat in the icing sugar and vanilla extract. Add a splash of milk to soften the consistency slightly. Swirl the icing on top and sides of the cake once it has cooled. Sprinkle over the black sugar sprinkles to cover the top and trim the lolly sticks, so that you have a stem of about 3-4cm to stick into the cake, and then plunge the sticks of the foreshortened lollies into the cake so that the ghoulish faces leer out from their black-frosted graveyard.