Spooky Spiderweb Cake for Halloween

This spiderweb cake is perfect for Halloween. A rich chocolate cake and a marshmallow fluff cobweb that makes a fun and spooky treat.

Y’all already know how much I love Halloween. Our town in the Netherlands doesn’t celebrate Halloween with trick or treating, so we had to get a bit creative. Some towns do trick or treat, but unfortunately our town is not one of them. I’m hoping we can convince them to start! We still wanted the boys to have a fun Halloween experience so we decided to host a Halloween party.

Spiderweb Cake

For the party, I created a spiderweb cake with a decadent chocolate cake, marshmallow fluff cobwebs, piped spiderweb and fondant spiders.I really wanted to make a go-to chocolate cake so I made a rich, decadent chocolate cake with buttercream frosting. I’m not a huge fan of death by chocolate cake. I think chocolate cake should taste rich and decadent, but also light enough so it’s not overpowering. I learned two tricks to enhance the flavor of the chocolate:

1. Blooming cocoa powder – By using boiling hot water or some other warm liquid (butter), you can “bloom” the cocoa powder which brings out the chocolate flavor.
2. Espresso – By adding just a teaspoon of espresso, it enhances the flavor of the chocolate. Some people use hot coffee which essentially both blooms the cocoa powder and adds the coffee to bring out the flavor.

Spiderweb/Cobweb Sides

For the spiderweb cake, I wanted a realistic looking cobweb to go on the side of the cake. I got the idea from Handmade Charlotte’s marshmallow web cupcake topper. Instead of the melted marshmallows, I thought I would try marshmallow fluff. I think it worked ok, but it was a bit runnier than I would have liked. I would like to try the melted marshmallows to see it would hold in place. Basically, I took marshmallow fluff with my hands and stretched it out over the sides of the cake. This process was extremely messy, but also really fun.

Spiderweb Top

For the spiderweb top, I used white buttercream and a #3 tip from the Wilton writing tip set. Here are the steps I used to create the spiderweb cake top. I’ll try to upload a video of the process so you can see how to do it. Nerdy Nummies has a great tutorial for a SpiderMan cake that helped me create a simple spiderweb for the cake.

1. Pipe a straight line across the cake
2. Pipe another straight line that divides the cake into quarters
3. Pipe two more diagonal lines across the cake
4. Put dots along the lines so you have a guide of where to put the inner webbing
5. Pipe upside down smiley faces to connect the dots
6. Continue connecting the dots until you have a complete spider web

Fondant Spiders

For the spiderweb cake, I had to have a few spiders. I used store bought black fondant because making black fondant from scratch is a pain. I rolled out the spider body and head and attached it with a little water. Then, I rolled small pieces of black fondant to make the legs and let them dry for about 2 hours and then attached them to the spider. I used white and black fondant to make the eyes and used a shell fondant sculpting tool to “scratch” up the spider.

Tips Before You Get Started

• Make sure your ingredients are at room temperature.
• Let the liquid ingredients come to a small boil and be careful not to boil it for too long. Once it starts to bubble, take it off the heat.
• Pipe the spiderweb on a piece of parchment paper before you pipe it onto the spiderweb cake.
• Let the fondant spiders dry a few hours, preferably over night before attaching them to the cake.

Supplies

Here are some of the supplies I used to complete the spiderweb cake:

• Wilton writing tip set
• Stand mixer or hand mixer
• Offset spatula
• Digital food scale
• Black fondant
• Shell fondant sculpting tool
• Silicone mat

Note: Some of the links above are affiliate links, which means the seller will know that I referred you to their product, and I’ll get a small percentage of the sale. However, I don’t take your trust for granted, so I only recommend products I’ve used personally and stand behind 100%.