This Halloween Skull and Dagger Cake is a fun and spooky centerpiece that will be sure to scare any Halloween partygoers. This cake can also serve as desserts for  your guests, if they dare to eat it.

A Halloween skull and dagger cake on a black cake stand

 

Meet Yorick.  He’s my fun Halloween project and here’s how he and his name came about…

Why did I name him Yorik?

We have a lot of skull and skeleton Halloween decorations and everyone with a skull is called Yorik, after the Shakespeare play Hamlet as Hamlet himself is holding up a skull and recites:

Alas, poor Yorick! I knew him, Horatio, a fellow of infinite jest, of most excellent fancy – Shakespeare

 

A friend of mine told me she was having a Halloween party and needed something as a great centerpiece and asked if I had any ideas. I thought of cake, because I was thinking of making a fun cake for Halloween, just to exercise my creativity. If you’ve seen in the past, I like to make something fun like this Halloween brownie graveyard.

The skull cake pan used to make this cake

After looking around for cake pan ideas for this Halloween Skull and Dagger Cake, I came across this amazing pan from Wilton that is a skull that is baked in 2 cake halves, then joined together with frosting and decorated. I proposed my idea of covering it with ivory fondant and ‘faux finishing’ it with food paint and putting a cool dagger in the skull for extra Halloween spookiness. She love it and so Yorak was born.

 

A skull cake covered in white fondant and painted with food paint with a real dagger and red blood

 

The cake is made from a box mix. I don’t typically make box cakes, but for this project it’s more about the finished item and decoration than the actual cake . Making the cake is the easy part. The front and the back of the skull are 2 cake molds they are then stuck together with frosting.

 

How to cover the Halloween Skull and Dagger Cake with fondant

The fondant is a perfect shade of ivory and that is rolled out to a large sheet and placed over the cake. Fondant is easy to shape with your hands and you just press it into the eye sockets, nose and mouth. The excess fondant is gathered to the back of the skull then smoothed out and slightly tucked under then trimmed.

A skull cake being made, covered in white fondant

 

The picture below is a close-up of the back where you can see all the excess fondant came together in folds. Just smooth the folds out, trim and tuck under. If you get a hole, like I did in a few places just take a little fondant and smooth it over the hole.

 

The back of the cake showing the folds of the fondant

 

Next came the painting. Wilton make cake paint so I was able to mix red, yellow, blue and green to achieve a dark grey to create the shading of the eyes, nose and mouth, then used white to highlight the teeth.

 

The side of the skull cake showing the dagger sticking out and the faux blood dripping out made from gel food coloring

 

The dagger is an inexpensive real knife that I bought from Amazon. I was skeptical that the cake would hold the weight of it and it would fall out, but it went in quite snuggly and stayed. The blood is red gel frosting and that is it! Yorick is complete.

 

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Yield: 8 people

Halloween Skull & Dagger Cake

This Halloween skull and dagger cake is a fun and spooky centerpiece that will be sure to scare any Halloween partygoers. This cake can also serve as desserts for  your guests, if they dare to eat it.

Yellow cake is baked in a skull cake pan, covered with fondant and decorated with food paint.

Prep Time 3 hours 20 minutes
Cook Time 20 minutes
Total Time 3 hours 40 minutes

Ingredients

  • 1 yellow box cake mix, made per instructions
  • 2 pounds fondant, antique white
  • Frosting
  • Wilton cake paint
  • 1 Dagger
  • 1 tube red gel frosting

Instructions

  1. Make the cake according to box directions and bake in a skull cake pan.
  2. Allow the cake to cool completely then join the 2 halves together with frosting. Set into a cake stand.
  3. Roll out the fondant until thin (not too thin or it will tear). Roll the fondant over a rolling pin to lift onto the cake and smooth. Trim excess.
  4. Use the cake paint to create shade in the eyes, nose and mouth.
  5. Insert dagger into top of skull and drizzle red gel frosting.

Nutrition Information

Yield

1

Amount Per Serving Calories 711Saturated Fat 4gSodium 679mgCarbohydrates 130gProtein 2g