Day Two Hundred Thirty-Three: Haunted House Cake, Part I

Saturday we had a party for my son's 6th birthday.  Because it was so close to Halloween, we decided on a Halloween-themed party where the kids got to dress in costume.  It was a big hit with everyone, including the parents who were happy to see the kids wear his/her costume twice.  Since my son has a rather large class and all his classmates have siblings, we ended up having about 100 people at the party....Yes, about fifty kids and fifty adults.

Thank goodness it wasn't at my house.

At any rate, such a large party meant I needed a Big Cake.  I decided on Martha's Haunted-House Cake.  I'll post a photo here just because it's so awesome.

Seriously.  How cool is this cake?

Because the cake is so big (it's five layers) and each cake had to chill before the next step, it took me two days to make.  Thus:  Haunted House Cake, Part I.

This is the base of the cake.  It's twelve inches in diameter and is baked as three separate cakes with a layer of chocolate buttercream in between each layer.  (This chocolate buttercream is to. die. for.)

Three layers with crumb coat:

This is the top layer.  It consists of two nine-inch cakes with a layer of chocolate buttercream in between.

Each separate cake had to be chilled before putting the final coat of frosting and assembling the cake, which was done the next day.

Confession:  I was so, so, so nervous.  If I screwed this up, after singing "Happy Birthday", my sweet baby boy and all his guests would be passing around a bag of candy corn. Yikes!