Book Bites: Making a Ghost Cake

 

 

A few weeks ago we celebrated the birthday of a special friend and author, Eric Van Raepenbusch. His Three Ghost Friends series are super-cute stories available for download from iTunes. Our cake was inspired by his first book, Three Ghost Friends Learn About Colors.

While the cake looks really impressive, and will wow your guests at a Halloween or spook-themed party, it is REALLY easy to make. First, you need to read the book with your kids, though!

Sadly, I forgot to take pictures of the kids fighting over the iPod reading the eBook. Here’s a screenshot:

 

 

So, the idea is that these really cute, friendly ghosts see this fruit, eat their healthy snack, and change colors… notice the primary colored fruit? There’s a fair bit of dancing and color mixing going on, but more importantly, there is fun with color.

So… we decided to have some fun with color, too:

 

 

Wanna try it yourself? Here’s what you need:

• Your favorite cake recipe (we doubled the yellow cake recipe in this cookbook)
• Red, yellow and blue gel icing colors (more vivid than food coloring)
• White frosting
• Fondant (I got mine at Michael’s with a 40% off coupon – not too expensive, but you could make your own)
• Black sugar sheets (my new favorite decorating tool!)
• Oven-safe graduated mixing bowls

 

First, enlist some helpers to make the cake…

 

 

…and prepare for mishaps along the way.

 

Sift the dry ingredients, cream the butter and sugar, add dry to wet… just follow the recipe:

 

 

Spray your bowls liberally with cooking spray:

 

 

Divide your cake mix into three separate bowls (I said it was easy, not that there wouldn’t be a lot of dishes to clean up!) and add one primary color to each:

 

 

Stir really well:

 

 

Pour into your prepared bowls and bake according to recipe directions:

 

 

Let cool, then stack with icing between each layer:

 

 

Then apply a crumb coat layer of icing (For you “Cake Boss” fans… this is the “dirty icing” layer, so named because it looks dirty.):

 

 

This next part is what makes the cake impressive, and intimidates a lot of people… adding a layer of fondant. I have to admit, the first time I used fondant, I was nervous. Fondant seemed like such a mysterious thing, but it’s really a lot like playing with Play-Doh.

Roll it out on a counter-top heavily coated in powdered sugar, then lay it over your rolling pin to help you move it in one piece, and plop it on top of your cake tower, letting it drape down. Since it’s a ghost, you can pull and tug the fondant down to cover any cake that might peek out, and pinch the bottom so it looks like a sheet:

 

 

Then, with scissors, cut out your ghost’s features and apply them by wetting the back of the sheet lightly with water and gently pressing them onto the fondant:

 

 

Cute, huh? And such a surprise when you cut into it and see the layers of color:

 

 

Yummy! Now, go read Three Ghost Friends Learn About Colors and make this cake! Let me know when you try it… I ‘d love to hear how it turns out! Happy Haunting…