One of my favorite Halloween traditions is watching “It’s the Great Pumpkin, Charlie Brown.” Linus waits, undeterred by criticism from the rest of the Peanuts, for the Great Pumpkin to arrive, and it’s that dedication that inspired this cake, with two adorable spiders sitting in a pumpkin patch, holding legs and hoping for a visit from the Great Pumpkin.

The cake itself is vanilla, and it takes a fair amount of buttercream – I used vanilla almond to cover the cake and make most of the decorations, while using chocolate buttercream for the spiders. You’ll need a fair amount of piping tips for this effort, but for me, the end result was well worth it. This also might be one of the longest blog posts I’ve ever written because of the extensive decoration steps!

Ingredients

For the cake

• 1 cup flour
• 1 teaspoon baking powder
• dash of salt
• 8 tablespoons butter, softened
• 3/4 cup sugar
• 2 eggs
• 2 teaspoons vanilla extract
• 6 tablespoons milk

For the frosting and decoration

For the frosting and decoration

• 1 1/2 cups (3 sticks) butter, at room temperature
• 6 cups powdered sugar
• 3 tablespoons vanilla extract
• 1 1/2 teaspoons almond extract
• 2-3 tablespoons heavy cream
• 3-4 tablespoons cocoa powder
• Green, yellow, and red food coloring
• Chocolate chips (for spider eyes)
• Note: You’ll need the Wilton piping tips 233 (grass), 22 (star), 12 (medium plain), 5 (small plain), and 352 (leaf)

Preparation

Preheat oven to 350 degrees. Lightly grease two 6-inch round cake pans, line each with a parchment circle, and lightly grease the parchment.

In a small bowl, combine flour, baking powder, and salt; set aside.

In a mixer fitted with the paddle attachment, cream together the butter and sugar until very well-blended. Add eggs and vanilla extract and beat well to combine, scraping the sides of your bowl a few times.

Add flour and milk alternatively in two batches, beginning and ending with the flour and beating until completely combined.

Pour batter into prepared pans and bake for 18-22 minutes, until a cake tester comes out clean. Remove from oven and allow cakes to cool in the pan for about 5 minutes, then carefully turn out onto a wire rack to cool completely.

While cakes cool, make your frosting – you want to begin with a vanilla almond buttercream, then divide your frosting and make a smaller portion of chocolate buttercream from the original batch.

To make vanilla almond buttercream, beat butter on medium speed for about 1 minute; add 4 cups powdered sugar and beat on low speed to fully incorporate the sugar into the butter. This takes a long time (several minutes); I cover my mixer with a kitchen towel during the process to avoid a storm of powdered sugar.

Once sugar is fully incorporated, beat on medium-high speed for about 2 minutes; add vanilla extract, almond extract, 1 tablespoon heavy cream, and remaining powdered sugar and beat on low, then medium speed, to fully combine. You can add another tablespoon of heavy cream if necessary; you want a texture that’s easy to pipe, but can still hold its shape.

Divide your frosting as follows:

Reserve about 1 tablespoon white frosting for spider eyes. Place in a piping bag fitted with a small plain tip; set aside.

Take 1 1/2 cups and sift in 2-3 tablespoons cocoa powder (to taste) and mix in 1 tablespoon heavy cream. Fit a piping bag with a coupler and medium plain tip; fill with chocolate frosting and set aside. You’ll want the coupler to switch to a small plain tip later.

Take about 2 cups frosting and tint light green; I used a combination of green and yellow for my shade. You’ll add more green for the pumpkin leaves, vines, and grass later on.

Take about 1 cup frosting and tint orange for the pumpkins; I used a combination of yellow and red food coloring for this. Fit a piping bag with a medium star tip and place orange frosting inside the bag; set aside.

To decorate, place one cake layer on your cake stand; I put chocolate buttercream in the middle of my cake, but you can put the vanilla almond there if you prefer. Top with another cake layer. Cover the top and sides of the cake completely with light green buttercream.

To make the spiders, pipe one large and one small blob of frosting for the body and the head of each spider, then switch frosting tips to the small plain tip and pipe on the legs. Using the white frosting, pipe circles for eyes, then add chocolate chips for the pupils. You can also use candy eyes, but I find that the pupils on those “bleed” out into the whites…which I guess isn’t terrible for Halloween.

To make the pumpkins on the sides of your cake, pipe orange frosting in an up-and-down motion to create your shapes. To pipe the smaller pumpkins on the top of the cake, hold your piping bag vertically over the cake and pipe directly down, like you’re making a star, but let it fill out into a pumpkin shape.

Take the remaining light green frosting and add more food coloring for a darker shade. Fit a piping bag with a coupler and a grass tip; pipe grass around the bottom of the cake. Switch to a leaf tip and add leaves on your pumpkins, then switch to another small plain tip and add vines, if desired.

Use the remaining chocolate buttercream to finish your pumpkins by piping on their stems. A detail of the pumpkins on the side of the cake is below. Store the finished cake in an airtight container at room temperature for 2-3 days. Makes about 6-8 slices.