Halloween is just around the corner, and with all the costume preparation well under way, it’s time to look at having some fun making those delicious party treats.
With the bank holiday stretched out ahead of us, why not experiment with your baking skills and try recreate this eight legged friend courtesy of chef
Yvonne Carty from
Hey Pesto!, using Butlers Chocolate.
Forget a phobia of spiders – when they look this good, we’ll happily welcome them into our home!
Cake Ingredients:
- 8oz/200g Self raising Flour
- 9oz/225g Soft Brown Sugar
- 2oz/50g Cocoa Powder
- 1/4 pt/125ml Full Fat Milk
- 1/4 pt/125ml Sunflower Oil
- 3 eggs, separated
Decorations:
- 200ml cream
- 125g Butlers broken dark chocolate
- White Roll Out Icing (Orange too if available)
- 16 chocolate fingers/ wafer rolls
Method:
- Preheat your oven to at 180C /170 C, Fan/Gas 4 Mix the dry ingredients in a bowl.
- Mix the milk and oil in a jug and whisk in the egg yolks.
- Whisk the egg whites until they are thick and glossy (as if you were making meringues).
- Add the wet ingredients to the dry, mix well and then fold in the egg whites – being careful not to knock out all the air.
- Now pour mix into baking tins – we suggest two x 11.5 cm and one 20 cm or you could make 2 large cakes or 4 small ones.
- Bake for 12-15 minutes, until firm to touch.
- Leave to cool in the tin for about 5 mins then turn out onto a wire rack and allow to cool completely.
**Note: It’s not worth halving the recipe to make just one small cake so freeze the extra cakes for another day – or make a family of spiders!
Now comes the fun part – the decorating!
First you need some chocolate ganache:
- To make this you simply heat 200ml cream until simmering then pour over approx 125g Butlers broken dark chocolate and stir until melted.
- If you think it’s not thick enough you can add more chocolate but do remember it will thicken as it cools.
- Place one of the 11.5cm cakes onto a serving plate. Cover the body of the cake with the ganache then get ready to add the legs. We suggest wafer rolls for the legs, and chocolate fingers might work as well.
- You need 16 rolls - two for each leg to allow for the bend! Cover each roll in the chocolate ganache. Stick 8 of them into the body of the cake to form the tops of the legs. Then carefully ‘glue’ on the bottom half of each leg (wafer) using more of the ganache.
- For the face you need some roll out icing – white for eyes, orange for mouth. Stamp out two white circles for the eyes, ‘glue’ onto the body and then attach a small circular chocolate to each circle with a little of the ganache.
- To make the mouth, cut out a smile from the orange icing and stick it on!Et voila! Your scary Halloween spider cake is complete!
The Butlers Chocolate Experience opens this Halloween from Sunday, October 26th until Friday October 31st. Visitors will be taken under the wings of a witch on arrival, as well as treated to a movie, chocolate museum tour and take part in making a chocolate creation! 
