When the nights get cool and the pumpkins ripen, you know it’s time to make a cemetery cake for the young ghouls in your life. Whether you make it as the centerpiece of your Halloween party or as a treat for the kids while they wait for the day to roll around, it’s fun and eye-catching.
A cemetery cake, aka graveyard cake, is just a sheet cake with cookie “tombstones” and other Halloween-themed toppings. Any sheet cake recipe will do, but this one is unusually quick, tasty and fuss-free.
Ingredients for Cemetery Cake
- Flour: All-purpose flour provides the cake with much of its structure. In keeping with the cake’s theme, you could call it the recipe’s “backbone.”
- Sugar: The granulated sugar in this recipe is primarily a sweetener, though it does soften the cake’s texture.
- Baking soda: Baking soda is the leavening in this cake, reacting with the acidity of the sour cream to make the cake light and airy.
- Butter: Butter brings richness and flavor to both the cake batter and the icing.
- Cocoa: This recipe uses cocoa to bring a chocolate flavor to the cake batter and the icing.
- Sour cream: Sour cream enriches the cake’s flavor and its pleasant tang complements the chocolate flavor of the cocoa. It also provides the acidity baking soda needs to do its work in making the cake rise.
- Eggs: Eggs add richness and softness to the finished cake, and they also help the wet, dry and fatty ingredients combine (emulsify) more readily.
- Milk: The milk and butter in the icing help moisten the dry ingredients and give them a smooth, spreadable texture.
- Confectioners’ sugar: This powdered sugar acts as a sweetener and thickener in the frosting, giving it its finished texture and mouthfeel.
- Vanilla: The vanilla extract in the frosting isn’t a primary flavoring, but instead plays a supporting role by enhancing the cocoa’s chocolate flavor.
- Oreo cookies: Crumbled Oreo cookies make the cemetery “dirt” that garnishes the top of the cake.
- Black icing or gel: Black icing is exceedingly difficult to make from scratch, so for spooky-season treats such as this cake you’re better off using a commercial decorator’s gel or icing that comes in pure black.
- Vanilla cookies: The oblong vanilla sandwich cookies are just the right shape to make “tombstones” on your cemetery cake, and they’re big enough that you can pipe decorations on them.
- Whipped topping: Blobs of whipped topping make charmingly perfect ghost decorations with eyes or mouths of black gel or icing.
- Candy toppings: The optional pumpkin candies and gummy worms aren’t essential for making this cake, but they do add to its fun factor.
Directions
Step 1: Make the cake batter
In a mixing bowl, combine the flour, sugar, baking soda and salt and then set the dry ingredients aside. In a saucepan combine the butter, water and cocoa and bring them to a boil over medium heat. Pour the hot liquids into the flour mixture and beat well to combine them; then beat in the sour cream and eggs.
Step 2: Bake the cake
Pour the batter into a greased 13×9-inch baking pan. Bake the cake at 350°F for 35 to 38 minutes, or until a toothpick inserted into the center comes out clean. Remove the cake from the oven, and let it cool on a wire rack for 5 minutes.
Step 3: Make the cooked frosting
While the cake is cooling, combine the frosting’s butter, milk and cocoa in a saucepan and bring them to a boil. Remove your saucepan from the heat, and stir in the confectioners’ sugar and vanilla. Pour the frosting over the still-warm cake, spreading it or tilting the pan if necessary so the cake is evenly covered. Crumble the Oreo cookies and spread them over the frosting while it’s still warm and soft. Cool the cake completely.
Step 4: Decorate the graveyard cake
For tombstones, use icing to decorate the oblong vanilla cookies with words (RIP) or spooky faces, and place them on the cake. Pipe or spoon mounds of whipped topping onto the cake as ghosts, and use the decorator’s gel or icing to add eyes or mouths to them as needed. Refrigerate the cake for at least one hour after decorating it, so all of the components have time to set. Just before serving, add the pumpkin candies and gummy worms if you’ve decided to use them.
Cemetery Cake Variations
- Go autumnal rather than macabre: Halloween is an excuse to have fun, but so are cakes. You can shift this one from Halloween-centric to generally autumnal and enjoy that fun for a longer period by changing the toppings. You might opt to pipe lots of green leaves and vines on the cake, for example, and then use pumpkin candies to complete your “pumpkin patch.” Alternatively you might ice small, leaf-shaped cookies in decorative autumn colors and scatter them around the top of the cake.
- Tweak it for your sports fan: An easy, flavorful sheet cake such as this one can easily be adapted for other themes, and an obvious one is sports. Spread the cake with green icing, and you have a grassy field for a football- or soccer-themed cake. Use caramel frosting and you have a hardwood basketball court or bowling lanes. With white frosting you can make a rink for your figure skater or hockey fan. Sports-themed decorations are easy to find at baking supply shops or online, and they’re also easy to improvise with icing and a piping bag.
- Follow the seasons: Sheet cakes are the no-fuss dessert option any time you have a gathering, so pull out this recipe for all of your seasonal celebrations. Garnish with crushed candy canes and marshmallow snowmen at Christmas time; candy hearts and pink icing for Valentine’s; pastel icing, peeps and little candy eggs at Easter, and, well… you get the idea.
How to Store a Cemetery Cake
Any leftover cake can simply stay in the pan, with an airtight cover. Alternatively you can portion the leftovers into individual food storage containers with tight-fitting lids. In either case the whipped-topping “ghosts won’t hold up well at room temperature (especially if you’ve used real whipped cream), so the cake should be refrigerated or the ghosts scraped off. The kind of non-dairy whipped topping that doesn’t say “refrigerated after opening” is technically food-safe at room temperature, but it will still sag, deflate and generally not be appealing.
How long will my cemetery cake keep?
In your refrigerator with an airtight cover the cake will last for three to five days. The ghosts and candy toppings (if you’ve used them) will predictably begin to lose their texture and may discolor the surrounding frosting, but the cake will still taste fine.
Can I freeze the cemetery cake?
Yes, any leftover cake can be frozen and later thawed. Remove any remaining toppings first, then cut the cake into individual servings. For the best storage life, freeze the portions on a parchment-lined sheet tray and then wrap them individually before packing them into freeze bags or freezer-safe containers. Portions will last for one to three months, depending how well they’re packaged.
Cemetery Cake Tips
Is this basically a chocolate version of the Texas white sheet cake?
Yeah, pretty much. The Texas sheet cake is white and delicately flavored with almond extract instead of cocoa, but the ingredients and method are very much the same and both produce a light, moist sheet cake with minimal effort. A simple rule? If your occasion calls for a white cake (strawberries and cream for Valentine’s, maybe) make the Texas version; if you lean toward chocolate, make the cemetery cake version.
Can I give this a punchier chocolate flavor when I make it for adults?
Of course, you have lots of options. One is to use top-quality chocolate chips as an add-in, where they’ll lend a little pop of extra chocolate flavor in every mouthful. Adding espresso powder to any chocolate recipe deepens its flavor and gives it an intense dark-chocolate vibe. If you really want to double down, swapping out the recipe’s frosting in favor of chocolate ganache will up the richness by several levels.
Do you have any suggestions for other scary toppings?
If Halloween is your thing (really, really your thing!) the sky’s the limit. Horror- and Halloween-themed cake decorations, edible and non-edible, are widely available online and (seasonally) in party stores and bakers’ supply shops. If you’re skilled with a piping bag, you could even make your own decorations by decorating shaped cookies with various colors of royal icing.
