How to Decorate a Halloween Bundt Cake

Preheat the oven to 150°C fan and grease the bundt tin with Cake Release.

Melt the chocolate in a large bowl over a pan of simmering water. Remove the bowl from the heat and sift in the cocoa. Add the vanilla, soured cream and 55ml of boiling water to make a smooth, thick paste.

In the bowl of a stand mixer (or use an electric whisk) cream together the butter and sugar until light and fluffy. Add in the eggs one at a time, whisking in between each addition. Stir in the chocolate paste and mix until just combined.

Sift in the flour, baking powder, bicarb and salt. Use a large metal spoon to fold in the dry ingredients. Add a good squirt of black food colouring, approximately 2 teaspoons, and stir in well.

Transfer the mixture into the prepared tin and smooth the top. Bake in the oven for 40-45 minutes until well risen and a toothpick inserted into the deepest part of the cake comes out clean. Leave the cake in the tin for 10 minutes before turning in out onto a cooling rack.

Decant a third of a pot of royal icing into the bowl of a stand mixer (or use an electric whisk) and beat it with some extra royal icing sugar and few drops of water until thick, smooth and glossy white. Divide the icing between 3 bowls and use food colouring to colour each bowl purple, orange and green. Take 3 piping bags, each fitted with a small writing nozzle and fill each bag with coloured icing.

Put the cooled bundt cake onto a cake board. Using one colour at a time, pipe loops all around the surface of the cake, layering up each colour.

Top Tip: you can drizzle the icing onto the cake with a spoon or fork rather than pipe it on if you wish.

Add sprinkles and edible eyes to the icing. To make larger eyes, take a few white Deco Melt buttons and add a dot of melted black deco melts to the centre of each ‘eye’. Add these to your ghoulish bundt cake.

Your Halloween bundt cake is now complete!