The Great And Spooky Ghost Cake

I have turned into a person who fondants. It is, for real, one of the most fun evening activities ever, especially if you make a friend or your mom do it with you and drink copious amounts of pinot grigio while mushing icing into the shape of spiders.

I am aware that this looks impossible. Trust me, I have in the past found it to be so. Except at this point I have tried it a couple of times, and oh:

Possible.

So here’s what you do to make a fondant cake without making yourself insane:

1. Do not try to make it from scratch; and
2. Take shortcuts wherever possible.

In short: be lazy.

The Great and Spooky Ghost Cake

What You Need:

• 2 boxes white cake mix (and whatever ingredients you need to make the cakes, e.g. oil and eggs)
• 1 large can white frosting
• Food coloring
• 1 24-oz package black fondant
• 1 12-oz package white fondant (you can get a 24-oz package, but you’ll likely have fondant left over)

What You Do:

1. At least one day before you plan to frost the cake, combine the two boxes of cake mix and prepare according to package directions (of course doubling the amounts of oil and eggs you add as well). Add food coloring to create your desired shade (what you see here is about 1/2 bottle of red food coloring + 10 drops of blue).
2. Pour into three round cake pans, and cook according to package directions, testing for doneness with a toothpick.
3. Once cakes have cooled, wrap them in plastic wrap and set them in the freezer for a few hours (or up to 5 days).
4. Remove frozen cakes and unwrap them. Add food coloring to the frosting to create your desired shade (I decided to match the color of the cake), and frost each layer. Then frost the entire outside of the three-layer cake: you don’t need to use a lot of frosting – just a thin layer is fine – but be sure to make the surface as smooth as possible.
5. Mush the black fondant in your hands until it feels soft, then lightly sprinkle powdered sugar on your countertop and roll it out to 1/4″ thickness.
6. Watch this video from about the 3:17 point, where you will see the exact technique required to actually top the cake with fondant. It’s not as hard as it appears, I promise.
7. Divide the white fondant into bowls and color them as you wish (just mush a couple of drops of food coloring in until you get the desired shape), then sit down with your pinot grigio and get your Play-doh on (it really does feel like being five and playing with Play-doh).

P.S. My son calls ghosts “ghosts-es,” which means that I try to give him every single opportunity available to talk about them. Enter: the Great and Spooky Ghost Cake. (Or, since he is five, the Great and Moderately-Spooky-but-Mostly-Kind-of-Cute-Ghost Cake.)

P.P.S. Since my weekend was an actual Halloween explosion, get ready for a lot of fun seasonal content this week.