We take Halloween pretty seriously in my house. I love to decorate the house (inside and out), go to the pumpkin patch, get lost in corn mazes, drink hot apple cider and so on. But one thing that is especially fun, is making Halloween treats and goodies. And since I work as a Wilton Method Instructor, I tend to frequent the Wilton website for ideas as well as other online cake decorating boards and sites. I recently decided to make, just for the heck of it, a cake inspired by one I found on Wilton's site. It's titled "Trouble's Brewing Witch Cake".  For complete instructions follow the link here: http://www.wilton.com/idea/Troubles-Brewing-Witch-Cake.

If you follow the link you will notice that their adorable little witch is standing at her "cauldron", the Wilton Melting Pot for candy melts. I didn't add this feature to my design.  I did however, follow pretty much everything Wilton calls for. I used the Classic Wonder Mold (pictured below).

There are so many things you can do with this pan.  I absolutely LOVE it.  I've used it for a Barbie Doll cake and even a mermaid on a pile of sand. I baked my cake as directed on the instructions that come with the mold. While it was baking, I decided to just pull the doll's hair back into a pony tail. Wilton's instructions say to make black royal icing and paint the hair.  I didn't want to make the royal icing just to paint the dolls hair so I elected to simply pull it back.

Once the cake cooled I leveled it, covered it in buttercream, then covered it again in black fonant. Using fondant is a lot like playing with Pladough. If you are not used to using fondant, then you can cover it in any Halloween colored buttercream (a dark purple would look awesome!).  Next I wrapped the dolls body with the fondant. If you aren't using fondant then you could pipe a design onto the doll's body with maybe a star tip or a large round tip, like tip 12. Be creative and play around with it. You could continue the design down the dress also.

For an added touch, which is hard to see on the photo, I covered her dress in purple shimmer color dust. Her arms and face are also colored with green color dust.

Then to make the hat, I covered a waffle cone and cracker in black buttercream and secured them together with melted chocolate. I also piped an orange spider web and spider onto my doll with melted orange candy melts. I am very happy with the end result. She is absolutely adorable!

Make this adorable little cake and you will surely impress any ghoul or ghost this Halloween!