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1
Set oven to 180C and place paper cases into trays.
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2
Beat together the salted butter, caster sugar and vanilla extract.
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3
Add in the eggs one by one, beating as you go.
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4
In a separate bowl, sieve together the flour, baking powder and cocoa powder.
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5
Fold these dry ingredients into the wet mixture until combined.
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6
Spoon the mixture into cases and bake for about twenty minutes or until a skewer poked into the middle comes out clean.
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7
Try not to overcook as the cakes won't be as moist.
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8
Leave the cakes to cook before icing otherwise the icing will melt and slide off.
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9
For the icing, use a 1:2 ratio of unsalted butter:icing sugar.
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10
If you tend to be heavy-handed with the icing you can adjust accordingly, but this amount should just ice 12 cakes.
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11
Beat together the icing sugar, butter and vanilla extract.
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12
Add any colour you require.
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13
For the orange colour of my cakes I added about 5 parts yellow colour to 1 part red, but you can add whatever you need to get the shade you desire.
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14
If the icing is too thick, add a little cold water.
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15
Pipe onto your cakes.
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16
For my decorations I went with chocolate spiderwebs.
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17
For this I melted 40% cocoa cooking chocolate in a bain marie (the fancy name for when you put the chocolate in a bowl on top of a pot of hot water and melt the chocolate that way).
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18
When the chocolate had cooled down enough, I piped it onto greaseproof paper in spiderweb shapes and put it in the fridge to set.
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19
My webs ended up being really melty and sort of melted onto the icing, which I think is down to the chocolate I used and the fact that I didn't temper it.
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20
Keep this in mind if you want your webs to stand up straight.
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21
For my other cakes I bought little knife decorations (which are made of petal paste so I don't think they'd be too hard to make yourself) and added some edible fake blood around them.
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22
For the fake blood I just mixed about 1 tsp maple syrup with red food colouring - I used gel colouring to keep the consistency sticky.
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23
Any syrup will do, e.g.
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24
corn syrup or golden syrup.
