Zombie Halloween Cake

This year, I thought I would do something different and scary for Halloween. I thought I’d bake. You should have seen the look of horror and disbelief in my wife’s eyes. Her concerns are well founded as I am something of a Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde when it comes to cooking. Away from the kitchen, I am very calm and relaxed. In the kitchen, I am a wreck.

My wife has become exceedingly good at changing my mind and offering other distractions whenever I tell here I am “thinking about making something in the kitchen”. She jumps into action and either suggests we go out for dinner or she can make something special for me. A lesser man might abuse this, a smart man most certainly uses this to his advantage.

As I am sure my wife is reading this, I am now in trouble. Oh, well. I had a good run…

At Father Geek, we speak often and passionately about bonding with out children, especially spending our time sharing what we love with them. One of my favorite things in the world, and very timely with Halloween right around the corner, are zombies. I have always been fascinated and terrified of this classic monster. As a child, the thought of zombies breaking down the door to my room was enough to keep me up all night. As an adult, cheesy zombie movie marathons are more than enough to keep me up all night, too!

After looking at several ideas on the interweb , I sketched out an idea that would allow me to fuse zombies and cake mix into a cohesive Halloween baked good. The idea was to create a cake and make it look like a graveyard with zombies loitering around the headstones. I also sketched some pumpkins in the graveyard for good measure. When I showed this to my little geeks, they were fascinated and excited to make the cake with me! When I showed it to my wife, she was frightened. Lucky for me, I have a great wife and she agreed to “look the other way” while my sons and I wrecked her kitchen.

After a quick run to the local grocery store for what we needed, we started to make the cake. As expected, there was a mess, but nothing a wet cloth, a couple rolls of paper towels, and a pressure washer couldn’t clean up. In fact, the entire process went very smoothly.

Making a cake is easy, but rather boring - making a cake with your little geeks makes it fun!

As you can see, the kitchen is still in one piece, or it might appear to be so thanks to fancy camera angles and lighting. My wife was pleased to see that there was no cake batter on her ceiling and everyone still had their fingers. Plus, the zombie cake turned out great! So great, in fact, my little geeks didn’t want to eat it. They wanted to keep it until after Halloween.

Your results may vary, but there is simply no such thing as a "bad zombie cake"

This was a very entertaining, worthwhile project and one I’d do again. My little geeks and I had a great time, and I can honestly tell you I felt much less stress in the kitchen. I’m a long way off from being a great cook, but I am proud to say I can make one mean zombie cake with my little geeks!

Zombie Halloween Cake Instructions

Want to make your own? Here you go!

Ingredients:

• 1 box of cake mix (we used Dark Chocolate)
• 1 can of brown cake icing
• 1 bag of Oreo Cookies
• 1 bag of Candy Corn (with the pumpkin types included)
• 1 bag of Milano Cookies
• A small horde of zombie figures
• a cardboard box
• crayons or markers

First, bake your cake, following the instructions on the box. While the cake is baking, crush about 10 Oreo Cookies (eat the rest). Do not separate the icing from the cookies. I suggest you put the cookies in a big freezer bag and crush them in there. This keeps the crushed cookies in the bag and greatly reduces the effort of cleanup later.

When the cake is done and cooled, remove it from the pan and cover it with icing.  Take the crushed Oreo Cookies and sprinkle on the cake. This will create the “paths” through the cemetery.

Next, take as many Milano Cookies a desired and break them in half. If you are still hungry after all those Oreo Cookies, eat the Milano Cookies now and say goodbye to your skinny jeans. Place the broken portion of the cookies into the cake to create grave headstones.

Place the candy corn pumpkins, candy corns, and zombies around the graveyard as desired. Festive!

We used zombies from the game Last Night on Earth, by Flying Frog Productions, but any zombie, ghost, or other Halloween figures will also work. Don’t use clowns, however, as that is just too terrifying.

Last, measure and cut cardboard to surround the cake. Color each piece of cardboard so it looks like a fence. Place this cardboard around the perimeter of your cake.

Good luck and send us pictures of your zombie Halloween cake if you bake one!