DIY Spooky Halloween Skull Cake

Last year, I was obsessed with the Nordic Ware Halloween Skull Cake Pan from Williams-Sonoma. I’m not really big into baking, but the thought of being able to bake a cake in the shape of a skull was enough to turn me into Betty Crocker! Well, unfortunately for me, the pan sold out relatively quickly last Halloween season, but this year it came back and I had to have it! So, my husband surprised me with it last month and to thank him I immediately made him a cake using the pan!

Mike loves red velvet cake, and I thought it would be the perfect type of cake to make to test the pan! The cake itself is obviously red, and when covered with the off white cream cheese frosting, I thought it would look like a real (enough) skull, and then when you cut into the cake it would look like it was bleeding because of the red cake underneath! I was super excited to make the cake, and although I used a simple cake mix and pre made frosting, it was a really fun and festive activity.

As you can tell from the image of the cake pan, the cake is made in two pieces. The pan itself has two wells, one for the face of the skull and the second for the back of the neck and head. Once the cakes are baked, you connect both halves to create a complete 3D skull! But I was thinking about it and if you wanted to, you wouldn’t necessarily need to make the whole cake, you could just use the well with the skull face and that would make a festive cake that didn’t require too much coordination connecting the two halves of the skull. Using both wells, it took two boxes of cake mix, so it becomes a rather large cake in the end once it’s all together, so in the future I will probably end up making half of the cake more often than the whole head!

Now, although this is a Halloween themed cake pan, I think it’s interesting enough to use year round and I plan to make skull cakes for every event I plan to attend from now until forever! Really, the possibilities are endless. The next cake I make may be a white cake, perhaps an angel food cake?!? That could be awesome and it wouldn’t require frosting (which, admittedly, I am not so good at) but would still give that bone white skull look! For now, if you would like to see how my cake turned out and the process for how I put it together, check out my video below!

I love this cake pan, and if you are a fan of skulls and/or Halloween, I think this is a great festive addition to your bakeware collection! Now, if you like the skull motif but don’t think you would get much use out of such a large pan, Nordic Ware also makes a Mini Skull Cakelet Pan that makes 6 large cupcake sized skull cakes (face only). Since the Halloween bakeware is currently on sale, I may go ahead and pick this one up as well!

Thanks for reading (and watching)! So, tell me… who else is super excited for Halloween? What sort of festive treats are you looking forward to for celebrating the season of spooks and ghouls? Let me know in the comments below!