Haunted House Cake Tutorial
Learn how to make a creepy Haunted House Cake in this cake decorating video tutorial!
This festive haunted house cake is perfect for Halloween parties! It's great for any age, and incorporates a few of my favorite cake decorating techniques: a wax paper transfer, buttercream piping, and painting on buttercream!
Table of Contents
Why we Love It
- This haunted house design looks impressive but is simple to do!
- You can easily use this design idea on a single tier cake or on top of a sheet cake.
- Perfect for Halloween parties
Cake Tiers
In this video, we are working with an 8 inch tier, and a 6 inch double barrel tier. (We explain double barrel {"Tall"} cakes in a separate video if you are interested in learning this technique.)
We've frosted the tiers with our crusting Fluffy Vanilla Buttercream from the recipes section and stacked (with bubble tea straw supports) as usual.
Each tier is on its own cake board. The double barrel has an extra cake board with supports within it.) Please see our video on tier stacking if you have any stacking questions!
Materials for Haunted House Cake
Vanilla Buttercream (We used our crusting Fluffy Vanilla Buttercream recipe from our Recipes section but our Classic Vanilla Buttercream is a good choice also.
Black Fondant for the silhouette
Piping Tips: Small round tips for the tree, gate, etc. : We used Wilton tips 1 & 2
Viva paper towels (Optional, but I used the Viva method for smoothing buttercream. You could also use the hot knife method of smoothing buttercream or go with a textured look!)
Food Coloring: Super Black, Orange, Lemon Yellow, Bright White (I used Americolor, use whatever brand you like.)
Vodka or lemon extract (I mixed a little vodka with my yellow & white coloring gels to create a paint.)
Sharp Knife or X-acto blade
Waxed Paper
Shortening
Piping Gel
Fondant rolling pin
straight pin (for the pin-prick method)
Black Food Coloring Pen (We used an Americolor Pen. If you don't have one, dip a toothpick into a paint of black coloring gel + vodka to add your details.
Notes on the Haunted House Cake:
While my cake is buttercream, this design could easily be transferred to an all-fondant cake.
Windows for Haunted House
We painted our buttercream yellow for the windows, but if you'd rather, you can either frost that section of cake in yellow buttercream before applying your house, or you can place very thinly rolled pieces of yellow fondant to the back of your haunted house.
You could even pipe buttercream into the windows with a thin piping tip. I do like the variation of color that painting gives though!
Haunted House Gate
Don't feel confined to my haunted house gate design. If you don't feel comfortable piping the scrollwork of the gate, you can use fondant to create a decorative entrance instead, or a simpler piping pattern.
Remember, piping the doors of the gate so that the bottom and top of each door is slanted will give you the feeling that they are opened.
More fun Halloween cakes to Try
We have more fun Halloween Party cakes to share with you, including a Fun Haunted House Cake! This carved haunted house cake is bright green and decorated with candy and other spooky accents. (It is the Halloween version of our gingerbread house cake!)
We have more free Halloween cake tutorials to share with you! Some of our most popular are our Monster Bundt Cake Tutorial, Ghost with Balloons Cake, easy Pretzel Monster Cake, and cake with Ghost Cake Topper!
You can find our full collection of favorites here: Favorite Halloween Cakes!
Enjoy the Video!
We hope that you enjoy this Haunted House Cake! If you give it a try, we would love for you to leave a comment and photo below!
Another adorable cake!!!
Another fabulous creation!!! I can't wait to get an order for a Halloween cake:) Thank you Melissa!!!
~Jennifer
I love the look of that cake! The black on white gives it that Halloween feel. Love it. Very clever. :)
It's a really beautiful cake. I love the black on white, plus the oranges. You're very good at explaining. Happy Halloween!!
Very elegant. Love it !!
I am so going to make and take this to work. You make the most beautiful cakes with such a simple techniques. I am so happy I joined. Plus I now know how to to any kind of silhouette trans☺️ From watching YOU. thank you.
Awesome! I wish I had your talent. I'm still struggling with smoothing buttercream :) Thank you Deb K
Thank you all so much for your comments!!
@Andrea-- I'm so happy that you plan to make it! Thanks for your kind words! xo
@Deb- Thanks, and your smoothing will improve with every cake. Have you seen our Viva method video? Or you may prefer the Hot Knife method. Luckily textured buttercream is in style and seems to be here to stay--which is a great thing for anyone who doesn't enjoy the smoothing process ;0) I love textured cakes--even just a light texture or spackled look would work well with this design.
Hi, for some reason i can not listen anything just can see the image, what did you use to pipe the trees and the windows and everything else? Buttercream ? If so which consistency? Thanks
Hi Fanny-- Yes, I used buttercream. Just medium consistency is fine (if it flows easily and holds it's shape nicely, that's perfect.) -
I'm sorry that you are unable to hear it! - If you haven't already, make sure that your volume is turned up both on your computer as well as on the video window. Let me know if you have any questions!
Hi Fanny, The windows were piped with medium consistency buttercream colored with AmeriColor Super Black. This black buttercream was used with all the piping. A Wilton tip 1 was used for the windows. Wilton tip 2 was used for the trees and the fence on the bottom tier. Black fondant was used for the wide vertical posts on the bottom tier gate. I am sorry you cannot hear the video. Is this going on with You Tube videos and other videos or is it just with our site?
Absolutely awesome. My daughter watched this video with me and she said she wants to make this for Halloween as well as the NIghtmare before Christmas Cake. I am so excited to get to making cakes full time