Haunted Halloween

My friends and I had another Iron Chef night, and this time the secret ingredient was Halloween. We were assigned dessert, so I went on a search to find something spooky. I wasn't originally planning on doing a time-consuming, detailed dessert, but the baker in me took over and I wanted a challenge.

I found Martha Stewart's Haunted House cake, or should I say, it found me. I knew I didn't have it in me to do every last detail like Martha, but I worked my heart out on this cake. It took me hours to make, but it was a lot of fun. And it turned out pretty haunted looking, don't ya think?


A few notes about this cake - it's a devil's food cake, meaning it's very dark chocolatey-tasting. I was very pleased with the flavor, but it did end up a little drier than I had hoped (probably from my tweaking of sizes of pans to cook it in).

On to the chocolate buttercream frosting. It was honestly delicious. Light, chocolatey, buttery, and oh-so-good. This frosting will definitely be making it into my line up of go-to recipes.

The chocolate cookies for the tree and house were made with dutch-processed cocoa, which is why they look almost black. The cookies were a little salty for me, but they held up really well on the cake. Until the tree fell off of the cake and broke...

Have a Happy Halloween!