Okay, maybe if you are scared of spiders you won't like this cake! But if you want to scare the pants off your guests, friends, co-workers or whomever, this dessert is the perfect Halloween treat!

This cake is really pretty simple. We came across the idea on Pinterest (it's originally from Pizzazzerie) and decided it would make a great entry into an office Halloween treat contest. On the outside, this cake looks unassuming, but cut into it and <insert high-pitched scream here>.  Once you cut and remove the first slice of cake, a cluster of spiders will spill out!

Image from Pizzazzerie

We chose to do a white sponge cake with adjustments for high altitude already built into the recipe, but you can choose whatever white cake recipe you want. The reason you want a white cake is so the black spiders really stand out in contrast to the cake. In all, this cake recipe made 4 layers! And we decided to include all 4 layers into this cake since they didn't bake up too high.

There are two important things to help you to get the siders to tumble out of the cake when you cut and remove the first slice. One is to cut a hole into the center of all the layers except for the top layer. (Yes, you will be cutting a hole in the bottom layer.) The second is to not frost the inside of the holes with a crumb coat. You don't want a bunch of your spiders sticking to the inside of your cake.

We cut 2.5" circles into our three bottom layers. (We saved our circle cut-offs from the cake and made something with it which you'll see at the end of the post!) Stack and ice with a basic buttercream frosting then, add plastic spiders. We cut the ring off some spider rings and added them along with some black round sprinkles and some white bone sprinkles. Add on the top layer then crumb coated the cake and chill it for at least 10 minutes.

Next, add a ton of frosting onto your cake and using a bench scraper, remove the excess frosting for a smooth look. Because our cake was so high and we had so many layers, this part used up an entire recipe of buttercream. So we made a half batch to add rosettes to the top of the cake.


We used a Wilton 1M tip and white frosting, adding on some large rosettes, leaving space in between for the black rosettes. After we were done with the white, we added cocoa powered and black food coloring to the remaining frosting, using hot water to soften it up a bit after adding all that cocoa powder. Remember that your black frosting will darken as it sits. We ended up having a really dark charcoal grey frosting when we were done mixing and it deepened to a really nice black after about an hour.


Since we had placed our white frosting into some plastic wrap before inserting it into the piping bag, we were able to reuse the same piping bag without washing it. Then we added black rosettes and inserted some plastic spiders (rings still attached) into the white rosettes and a few on the sides of the cake. And that's it! Super easy and super fun!


And what did we do with those three 2.5" circle cuts from the cake, you ask? We made a cute little monster with googley eyes! Just stack your cuts together and insert a bamboo skewer to help you hold the little pieces together while crumb coating it. We piped on little stars for fur and added candy eyes. So cute and he's got some character to him!


Enjoy your Halloween!