Butter Pecan “Man-Eater” Cake
….cue Hall & Oates… OOOH OOH, here we come. Watch out boys, we’ll chew you up…LITERALLY.
Finally, a cake that bites back! How fun is this Man-Eater cake? I got the idea from a video on the So Yummy Facebook page years ago and had always wanted to make it! It seemed easy enough to do and surprisingly, it was! To make it a little extra monster-y, I added some “fur” and eyeballs, which I think worked well!
Original Recipe: soyummy.com/recipe/maneater-cake
Since the inside of my little monster is just a three-layer cake, I chose to go with a favorite flavor and made a butter pecan cake with cream cheese frosting! I couldn’t find my whisk attachment for my stand mixer, so I used a paddle one instead and it was a bad choice. It didn’t affect the flavor but it made it very dense, whereas a whisk would have beat some air into the cake batter for a fluffier finish. Shrug - lesson learned. At least it still tasted good!
Cake and Frosting Recipe: mamaneedscake.com/butter-pecan-cake
Making the Mouth
If you watch the video on the Summy Yummy recipe, you’ll see that it’s very simple! First, I covered the entire cake in a layer of frosting and popped it in the fridge for a bit. Then I used my hand and ripped off a corner of the cake for the mouth and filled that area with black frosting to give it some depth.
making the teeth
After boiling some water in a tea kettle, I poured the hot water into a bowl with my almonds and let it sit for 15 minutes. That made it SUPER EASY to just gently squeeze and remove the skins! You could leave the almonds as they are since they’re naturally pointed, or you could grab a paring knife and carefully start to carve each almond into a more fang-like shape. The almonds will be very easy to carve after sitting in the hot water and it doesn’t take much effort, just a little extra time, which I think was well worth the effort. Once they’re done, you can just pop them around the mouth opening!
making the fur
To get that hair-like effect, I used a Wilton #233 piping tip. Cream cheese frosting isn’t as stiff as buttercream, so I couldn’t get it to stand in spiked ends as I had originally hoped. Instead, I bounced the tip up and down along the sides, and then just made wild patters on top to cover it all. It looks a bit ramen-y, but it makes it a bit wilder and I ended up really liking the finished results!
making the blood
Do you remember the hand pies I made last week? I filled those with store-bought strawberry pie filling and I had a good amount leftover. The filling itself was slightly translucent with chunks of strawberries, so I simply popped the filling into my small smoothie blender to puree it and end up with an opaque and bloodier look! I popped it into a piping bag and drizzled it between the teeth, leaving the fang tips exposed.
What do you think? Is this something you would do for a Halloween gathering? Let me know in the comments!
Here are links for some of the things in the photos:
Adult Black Costume Horns: target.com
Handcraft Metal Spider Bowl: potterybarn.com
6” Round Cake Pans: amzn.to/3AmPKHh (these are smaller than average, which I prefer)
Wilton #233 Piping Tip: amzn.to/3BoIpIJ
Disclosure: Some of the links below are affiliate links, meaning, at no additional cost to you, I will earn a commission if you click through and make a purchase.