Today was my birthday and I wanted to make something fun for a cake. I have Nordic Ware skull cake pan and I love it. Find it here. A large online retailer also has it, but it’s WAY more expensive.
I wanted to use a mirror glaze with it to make it look white, but wasn’t sure how that would work out. That glaze is supposed to run over the cake. I searched and was not able to find that particular cake with a mirror glaze. I found other skull cakes using mirror glaze, so figured it would work, but as that particular cake was not show cased, I decided to share my experience.
As this is about using the glaze, I’m not going to share all the recipes, and really, make whatever cake you want.
I used a Mayan Chocolate Bundt cake recipe, and ended up with the six cakes and another 9-inch round cake.
To grease and flour I used melted butter, as that gets into the tiny teeth crevasses better. Then I flour with cocoa. Yes, it works, and it looks better with a chocolate cake than flour does.
Once the cakes were baked, I cut off the excess cake while the skull cakes were still in the pan. Gave it a flatter edge. I’m not sure if waiting for the cakes to cool would have been better for an even edge. I don’t often level the bottom out on cakes.
In all this took three nights. It might take you less time, but I have health issues that make it harder for me to do all in one day. Also, the cakes need to be placed in the freezer overnight before pouring the glaze of it. I made the cake the first night, then placed them in the fridge to cool completely. The second night I made a filling that doesn’t have a name. It’s the frosting from a Death by Chocolate recipe I found in an actual paperback cookbook called Desserts. As there is no name to search the internet for, it’s 1 cup heavy cream and 8 oz semisweet dark chocolate, broken into squares. Melt both in saucepan until combined, cool then whip. I used half the recipe as I didn’t think I needed a full serving. I was correct.
While that was setting the second night, I took the cakes out of the fridge, dug out a bit of the middle, first with a decorating tip (large round one) then with a knife. It can probably all be done with a knife.
Once those were done, I used a knife to fill the middle, then evened out the bottom with the frosting. Then popped the skulls into the fridge, upside down, to allow the filling to set.
The third night, I made the mirror glaze. I found the recipe for that on the internet as well. As it was cooling, I grabbed the cakes, a glass lasagna dish and six shot glasses. You’re suppose to put the cake on a glass in a dish to catch what drips off. Make sure all six cakes fit, you do not want to move them too much once the glaze is on the cakes. I used shot glasses as I have a large collection and they are the correct sizes for the cakes!
When the glaze was cooled, I carefully poured the glaze over the first cake, and was glad to see it was working. I continued on with all the cakes then make sure to pour over the areas the glaze didn’t run onto.
Once all six were done, I realized I wanted a second coating… Had I thought about that to being with, I would have poured slower and more carefully to be able to NOT MOVE THE FREAKING CAKES! Sigh
So, I grabbed a second glass dish, and tried to move the first cake over, with the shot glass. Yeah, no, don’t do that. The glaze had already started to set and the glass popped out with an audible pop as the glass separated from the gelatin. So I grabbed five more shot glasses and carefully tried to move the cakes. By the third cake, I knew how to move them without touching the glaze.
Use both hands, just fingertips, on the bottom only.
Once the cakes were moved, I popped out the rest of the shot glasses, scraped the glaze into the bowl I used earlier, nuked it to the right temp and poured the glaze slowly over the skulls. It worked well.
The first picture is the first coating. The second and third are the second coating. I really like the way it turned out, including the pool of the glaze in the eyes and nose. It’s good stuff. If you try this out, I hope you enjoy it!
Cat Stark 