Gluten-Free Spooky Black Velvet Cake #Recipe by @Libby Klein #Halloween

Libby Klein Tonight is Mischief Night in South Jersey! The night before Halloween when kids pull pranks on unsuspecting neighbors. It's one of the main storylines in my Halloween Cozy Mischief Nights Are Murder! Instead of torpedoing your neighbor's house, what better way to use your eggs than to make a moist, delicate cake with the flavor of Oreo cookies. 

I found this cake online while looking for Halloween recipes. This is one of the times I wish I was a better photographer because the photos don't do it justice. This cake was gorgeous. Talk about a show stopper. I served it at two different parties and the consensus was that I'd be making it many more times. 

This was a very easy cake to make. No need for a mixer - just a whisk will do. You will need black cocoa which you can order through King Arthur and probably Amazon. A blackberry compote filling adds to the spooky vibe. Although, I think I used too much of the black cream cheese frosting between the layers so it's hard to see the purple layers. Next time I'd double the compote so it really pops. I'd also chop my blackberries in half so the compote would stretch further.

The chocolate skulls were tricky because you have to temper the chocolate which involves a thermometer and working quickly to get the melted chocolate into the molds before the temperature drops too much. I bought a mold on Amazon and used Lindt dark chocolate.

I did very little differently from the original recipe, but I did double it to make a four-layer ten-inch cake instead of the two-layer 8-inch cake that the recipe makes. I'll give you the original recipe here.

Let me know in the comments if you make any themed foods for Halloween.

Spooky Black Velvet Cake

Ingredients

Black Velvet Cake
2 cups White granulated sugar
2 cups Gluten-free 1 to 1 OR 2 cups All purpose flour sifted
¾ cup Black cocoa powder sifted
2 teaspoon Baking soda
1 teaspoon Baking powder
1 teaspoon Salt
2 Eggs room temperature
1 cup Buttermilk room temperature
1 cup Coffee hot
½ cup Canola oil
2 teaspoon Vanilla extract

Blackberry Compote Filling
2 cups Fresh blackberries
2 tablespoon White granulated sugar
1 tablespoon Fresh lemon juice
1 teaspoon Lemon zest
1 Cinnamon stick (I left this out)
¼ cup Water
1 tablespoon Cornstarch

Black Cocoa Frosting
8 oz Cream cheese softened
½ cup Unsalted butter softened
3 cups Powdered sugar sifted
1 cup Black cocoa powder sifted
¼ teaspoon Salt
1 teaspoon Vanilla extract

Decorations
Chocolate skulls - or 3 good quality dark chocolate bars and a skull mold
Fresh blackberries
Dried rose petals (I used fresh)

Instructions

 

Black Velvet Cake

Preheat the oven to 350°. Then, spray two-8 inch cake pans with nonstick spray. Line the bottom and the sides with parchment paper.

In a large bowl, sift together flour, black cocoa powder, sugar, baking powder, baking soda, and salt. Set aside.

In a separate bowl, whisk together buttermilk, oil, eggs, and vanilla.

Make a well in the center and add the wet ingredients. Mix until completely combined. Lastly, mix in the hot coffee.

Divide the batter evenly into the two cake pans.

Bake the cakes for 30 minutes or until a toothpick is inserted and comes out clean. 

Once the cakes come out of the oven, let them cool completely before removing them from the pans.

Blackberry Compote

Place the blackberries, sugar, lemon juice, cinnamon stick (if you're using it) and lime zest inside a medium saucepan. At first I thought the lime zest was weird, but I have fallen in love with adding lime zest to my blackberries and I plan to do it from now on.

Bring mixture to a boil and cook for 5-6 minutes. Then, stir water and cornstarch together. Add to blackberries and cook until thickened. Remove cinnamon stick and pour into a small bowl. Refrigerate for 1 hour.

Black Cocoa Frosting

Inside a bowl, add softened cream cheese and butter. Sift powdered sugar, black cocoa powder, and salt. Then, use a hand mixer to beat the ingredients together until smooth. Scrape down the sides of the bowl with a rubber spatula. Next, add vanilla and mix one more time to combine. I had a hard time keeping it away from my husband at this point. He kept sneaking into the kitchen to "sample" the frosting.

Making the Skulls

Chop the chocolate bars. 

Place two thirds of the chopped chocolate in the top of a double boiler on a low simmer. Using either a thermometer or a chocolate paddle with a built in thermometer like I have, melt the chocolate and bring up to 115 degrees F. Remove from the heat and add the remaining third of your chopped chocolate. Stir together until the chocolate is melted and you've brought the temperature down to 84 degrees F. Then return to the double boiler and bring back up to 89 degrees F. Pour the melted chocolate into your waiting mold. Tap it on the counter to get out any air bubbles, then leave it alone until the chocolate is set.

Assembly

Remove the cooled cakes from the pan. I used a cake leveler to cut my layers in half.

Spread a small amount of frosting onto your cake plate. Place the first layer of cake down. Pipe a circle of frosting just inside the outer edge of your layer to keep the filling inside. Then, spread an even layer of the blackberry compote inside.

Place the second layer of cake on top with the bottom of the cake facing up. This will give you a flat base when decorating.

Add frosting on the top of the cake and sides. Cover the cake with as little frosting as possible, but ensure that it's covered. Once your cake is crumb coated, place it inside the refrigerator for 20 minutes. Frost the cake with the remaining frosting. At this point I tried adding dried, candied rose petals, but as you can see below, mine had turned to dust and I had to abandon the idea and went and bought a real rose.

Top with chocolate skulls, fresh blackberries and rose petals.

This cake was a huge success with everyone who had some. My only disappointment was that you couldn't see the blackberry compote well. I'm sure its because I used too much frosting between the layers. No one was complaining.

See the original recipe here: https://www.theepicureanmouse.com/black-velvet-halloween-cake/

Gluten-free baker Poppy McAllister and her aunt Ginny are looking forward to a quiet, homey Christmas at their B&B in Cape May, but unfortunately, death isn’t taking a holiday this year . . .

Ever since Thanksgiving, Poppy and her pals have been left with an unsolved mystery of the romantic kind. But at least this mystery isn’t the kind that involves murder. That all changes when the body of a fish supplier is discovered in the kitchen of her ex’s restaurant—and he’s frozen, not fresh.

For once, it’s not Poppy who tripped over the corpse, yet she can’t escape being drawn in since the victim has a note taped to him reading Get Poppy. Figures—an engagement ring isn't labeled, but the dead guy is addressed to her. Now, while Aunt Ginny plans a tree-trimming party and pressures Poppy to decode a mysterious old diary, the amateur sleuth is asked to “unofficially” go undercover at the restaurant to help the police. Until then, the only crime Poppy had been dealing with was Figaro’s repeated thefts of bird ornaments from the tree; now it looks like it’s going to be a murder-y Christmas after all.

 

Libby Klein grew up in Cape May, NJ where she attended high school in the '80s. Her 
classes revolved mostly around the Culinary sciences and Drama, with one brilliant semester in Poly-Sci that may have been an accident. She loves to drink coffee, bake gluten-free goodies, collect fluffy cats, and translate sarcasm for people who are too serious. She writes from her Northern Virginia office where she serves a very naughty black smoke Persian named Sir Figaro Newton. You can keep up with her shenanigans by signing up for her Mischief and Mayhem Newsletter on her website. www.LibbyKleinBooks.com/Newsletter/