Our friends at Biscuiteers have made an extra special red velvet cake with chocolate buttercream and finished with clusters of little spider biscuits. Why not invite your friends and family over to sink their fangs into this dreadfully delicious Halloween cake? We used the Dualit Hand Mixer to beat together the cake mixture and to make the chocolate buttercream.

Shopping List

For the cake:

• 500g of plain flour
• 500g of caster sugar
• 1 tbsp cider vinegar
• 50ml red food colouring
• 50g of cocoa powder
• 1 tsp salt
• 1 tsp baking soda
• 4 eggs
• 200g of plain yoghurt
• 250g unsalted butter
• 2 tbsp apricot jam (for the glaze)

For the delicious chocolate buttercream:

• 200g icing sugar
• 100g softened, unsalted butter
• 55g sifted cocoa powder

Method

1. Preheat your oven to 180ºC (fan oven) or gas mark 6. Grease and line four eight inch sandwich cake pans.
2. Cream together the butter and sugar until it's a pale yellow colour and a fluffy texture. Slowly add in your eggs, one at a time. Add in the red food colouring and the yoghurt and beat everything until it's mixed well.
3. Sift the flour and cocoa together, then add half to the batter. Beat in the wet mixture and finally add the second half of the flour mixture.
4. In a small dish, mix together the bicarbonate of soda and the vinegar, which will start to fizz as you add them together. Add this to your mixture immediately, folding it all in with a spatula.
5. Evenly share the mixture into 4 cake pans. If you don't have 4 pans, you can split the mixture between 2 pans and bake your cakes two at a time.
6. If you are able to bake all at the same time, pop them into the oven to cook for 20-30 minutes, or until a skewer poked into the middle comes out clean. Leave to cool.

Whilst your cakes are cooling, use this time to make your buttercream.

1. Beat the butter for around 4-5 minutes until it's smooth and fluffy.
2. Add the icing sugar and cocoa powder, then beat for a further 2 minutes until smooth. You can add up to 50-100g of extra icing sugar if you'd like the frosting to have a thicker consistency.
3. Once the cakes have cooled, evenly spread the buttercream frosting between each layer of your cakes.
4. Put the jam in the microwave for around 30 seconds until it is slightly warm and runny. Using a pastry brush, cover the cake with a thin layer of apricot jam to create your glaze.
5. Prepare your white line icing, and create the pattern using a simple cobweb design on the outside of your cake. It's important that the cake is completely cooled at this point, otherwise the icing will begin to melt.
6. Finish off the cake with some Halloween extras. We think plastic spiders, sugar skulls or a few biscuits from the Biscuiteer's Halloween range would look perfect.

To explore more exquisitely made sweet treats from Biscuiteers, visit www.biscuiteers.com