How to Make a Bubbling Cauldron Cake for Halloween

Today I’m showing you how to make a real bubbling cauldron cake. This witch’s brew cake appears to have special brew bubbling away above a fire. The delicious eight layer Halloween cake is coloured black, orange, green and purple on the inside . . . a crazy surprise when it’s sliced open. 

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Somehow, the grandeur of Halloween has snuck up on me over the years. I made this realization the other day while at Home Depot, and then later at Canadian Tire. Since when do home stores sell Halloween decor? Or was I just living in a bubble before. Anywhooo, I got some cool things, but made the association that Halloween is becoming more and more like Christmas in the decorating department.  Somehow I missed the memo, but thank goodness I’m in the cake decorating profession where I can always be counted on to have an awesome looking cake for a party!

 This bubbling cauldron cake would make the perfect centerpiece on a dessert table . . . or any table in fact. As it bubbles away, you can watch the colors of the mist change from the multicolored LED lights. I’ve put a link below to where you can get the same one I have in the video. It works pretty well, but keep in mind that it spits water, so you only want to turn it on once the cake is ready to be served. Once everyone has seen how amazing it is, you can let it bubble away and wash the color off the gumballs. I went with buttercream instead of fondant because fondant and water do not play nicely together (unless you’re using water to stick fondant on fondant). I figured if I used buttercream, it would be more forgiving than fondant (which it was).

How to Make a Bubbling Cauldron Cake

Ingredients and Materials:

• 6 Prepared 10″x 3/4″ round vanilla cakes colored lime green, orange, purple, black 
• 2 Prepared 9″x 3/4″ round vanilla cakes colored lime green, orange, purple, black
• Prepared black chocolate buttercream
• Pretzel rods
• Gum balls-large and small, yellow and green 
• Lime green sixlets 
• Green and yellow candy skulls and bones
• Red and orange peach flavoured gummies or orange gum drops
• Plastic bowl (5″ diameter, 3″ depth)
• Mist Maker  
• Ateco 809 piping tip

Procedure:

1. Stack the 10″ cakes first, on a 12″ cake baord, using the black buttercream to fill the layers. Finish stacking with the two 9″ cakes. 
2. Taper the bottom (which is the top 9″ cakes) so that the 9″ and 10″ cakes meet smoothly. Don’t make your base (which is the top) smaller than 8″ round. Cover the whole cake in black buttercream. 
3. To flip the cake over, place an 8″ cake board on top of the cake. Place one hand on top, one underneath the cake and flip it over. Remove the base 12″ cake board (now on the top) by sliding a sharp knife or spatula between it and the cake.
4. Cut out a hole in the middle of the cake large enough to fit the plastic bowl. Place four dowels underneath where the bowl will fit, and place a small 4″ cake board on top of the dowels. Cover the inside of the hole and the top of the cake in black buttercream. Use a hot spatula to smooth the cauldron. Place the bowl into the whole. 
5. Using a large round tip (Ateco 809) pipe a round rim to the cauldron. On either side of the cake, use the same tip to pipe handles onto the pot.
6.  Cover the top of the cake in the multi colored gum balls and candies.
7. On the top of a 12″ round black cake board, lay out the pretzel rods and orange candies in a ring. Secure in place with black buttercream. Place extra pretzel rods into the middle for extra support of the cake. Transfer the cake to the top of the “fire” and make sure that it is stable. 
8. Set the mist maker up, fill the bowl with water, and place the fogger into the water. When ready to display, turn the fogger on, but not before! Water on the gum balls can cause the gum balls to lose their color.  
9. Keep cake in fridge until you are ready to serve.  It is best consumed within 2-3 days.

Working with the Mist Maker Tips (it sounds tricky, but it’s really not!):

• The mist maker needs a certain level of water to make the mist. If you add too much or too little, it won’t work very well.
• The mist maker spits water all over the place, so to prevent as much of that as we could, we used the skull on top of the plastic spacer that comes with the kit.
• When using something on top of the spacer, the distance between the fogger and the item needs to be a certain distance or the fogger won’t optimally fog.
• Warm water works slightly better than cold water.

Hope this helps out a bit!

Halloween Video Playlist: