Halloween Sponge Cake

Here's the shiny cake I made for Halloween (it would've been posted sooner, but... well... I'm very lazy)

Excuse the mess!

-Start with the standard sponge mix
       (for the 3 layer, 8" cake - 6 eggs: 12oz caster sugar: 12oz marg: 12 oz SR flour: 2 tsp vanilla essence,  divided into 3 cake tins)

-Bake for 30-40 minutes at 180oC until a skewer comes out clean. Leave to cool on wire racks.

-Layer up the cake with a fruity jam. Make sure the top layer is upside down so that the flat base of the cake is on the top. This makes it easier to decorate.

-Mix up a butter cream icing and flavour with a little vanilla.
-Apply two layers of butter cream to the entire cake for a nice smooth surface to ice.
-Applying two layers means that any loose crumbs are trapped in the first layer, and the second layer is lovely and smooth!

-Refrigerate between layers - just to firm up before starting on the next one!

What I really wanted to do with this recipe was play with ready roll icing and pretty colours! (I'd found some Halloween coloured icing in Home Bargains...)

Now... *apparently* icing a 3 layer 8" cake like this will require a kilogram of icing. That's quite a lot...

Anyway...

-To make a pale purple base mix 1kg of white icing with 100g of ready coloured purple icing. Cut the icing into 4 or 5 small blocks to make kneading the two colours easier. Knead the smaller pieces back together.

What I have here is a purple marble effect. That should look suitably spooky...

See?

-Dust the surface and the rolling pin with icing sugar
-Roll out to between 3 and 4mm. Turning frequently, and redusting as required.

-You should aim for a rough circle of icing of about 18inches in diameter (Diameter + height + height + waste)

This is a huge amount of icing. As you will see in a bit...

 

- Using both arms (not just your hands... this is a mighty swath of icing, after all) lift the rolled out icing and gently drape over the cake

hmmm. That is *quite* a lot of wastage...

-Using the flat of your hand very gently tap the icing to the sides of the cake, starting at the top and working round in a spiral-ish manner.

That really *is* a lot of wastage!

-Smooth the icing on to the sides of the cake, and firmly tap it to the base.

It's like a ghost cake!

-Take a sharp knife and trim away the excess icing

-To embellish the cake, roll out coloured icing (these were more of the Halloween ready-coloured pack) and cut out appropriately spooky shapes
-Mix up a little edible glue (about 2 tsp of the roll out icing, made liquid with 4 tsp water) and stick the shapes onto the cake.

I've brushed a little edible glitter over this, just for a bit of sparkle...

Here's the cake in its travelling box...
 

And here's the cake at its destination!

I can't remember where I found the information about ho much icing I would need to decorate an 8" cake. It was on-line somewhere. But they said a kilogram. So that's what I used (actually, it was 1.1kg after I'd mixed in the purple icing). I weighed what I had left over. It was about 700g. Which means that I used about 400g on the cake. Which is quite a lot less than a kilogram...

So I've now sealed the rest in clingfilm, and intend to use it on another cake. Another purple cake...