Halloween is here and yet another excuse to bake a cake! (Not that I need an excuse really ) This is a spooky spider web topped cake complete with two spiders!  I’m entering it into this month’s

Calendar Cakes

Each month Calendar Cakes has a theme and is hosted by Rachel at Dolly Bakes and Laura at Laura Loves Cake alternately. This month’s theme is of course ‘halloween’ and is hosted by Dolly Bakes. Take a look at all the great halloween ideas here: http://www.dollybakes.co.uk/p/calendar-cakes.html

You can still check out all the lovely cupcake entries for September at http://lauralovescakes.blogspot.co.uk/2012/10/calendar-cakes-september-round-up.html

Recipe for Caramel Layer Cake

Ingredients:-

175g softened butter

175g soft light brown sugar

3 eggs, beaten

3 teaspoons vanilla exttract

175g self raising flour

1 teaspoon baking powder.

Method:-

Preheat the oven to 170c and grease and line two 6″ cake tins.

Cream the butter and sugar together well. Then mix in all the other ingredients – beat for a minute to combine but don’t over beat. Divide the mixture between the two tins and bake for about 35 minutes or until they are golden brown and firm to touch.

Leave the cakes to cool in the tins for a few minutes and then turn out onto a rack. When they are completely cool each one can be cut into half horizontally. They can then be layered together with a caramel buttercream filling. The buttercream was also used to cover the cake.

Ingredients for the buttercream:-

150g softened butter

2 tablespoons caramel

300g icing sugar

Beat the ingredients together well for a few minutes.

To finish the cake

I melted 50g dark chocolate and then allowed it to cool a little. I drizzled it over the top of the cake in a spiral pattern (roughly) and then used a cocktail stick to make the spider web pattern. This is shown clearly in the fabulous Great British Bake Off book ‘How to turn everyday bakes into showstoppers’. They have a different recipe for a caramel cake which I’m looking forward to trying too.

Finally I made two spiders from chocolate ‘roll out’ fondant icing. I made two small round balls for their bodies and added some silver balls for eyes. I then rolled out two long thin sausages and cut each into eight for the legs. I just stuck the legs into the buttercream around the spider body – folding slightly.