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Home » Blog » Cake Decorating

Trick or Treat Bucket Cake

Published: Oct 10, 2019 · Updated: Jan 1, 2021 by Kara · This post may contain affiliate links · This blog generates income via ads

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This trick or treat cake is such a cute Halloween cake idea. First, there’s the chocolate trick or treat bucket cake, then it’s all topped off with cake balls and candy corn. This step-by-step cake tutorial shows you all the details on how to make this super cute Halloween cake.

trick or treat bucket cake pin graphic 1

This cake is so fun to make for Halloween and kids are gonna love it.

Trick or treat bucket cake

This cake is also a really easy way to get started working with fondant because you’re just covering the sides of the cake and it really doesn’t have to be perfect either.

Trick or treat bucket cake close up view

You’ll be doing a little cake carving with this one, but not too much. Make sure you keep the cake cut-offs because you won’t be wasting them. You’ll actually use them to make cake balls with and you’ll add them to the top of the cake.

By the way, if you need some tips for carving cake, I’ve got ya covered here.

top view of trick or treat bucket cake

You’ll probably want to add in a bit of Halloween candy as well to give it an ‘overflowing with candy’ look.

cake balls in trick or treat cake

I also think the added handle adds a finishing touch to it, but you’ll definitely want to do this a couple days ahead of time, so it has plenty of time to dry and firm up.

front view of trick or treat bucket cake

Alright, let’s get to the tutorial now. And don’t forget to check out the video at the end of the written tutorial that will show all the details as well.

This post contains affiliate links. As an Amazon Associate, I earn from qualifying purchases. 

SUPPLIES NEEDED TO MAKE THE TRICK OR TREAT BUCKET CAKE:

  • Cake Base that’s 10 or 12 inches round (Make sure it’s thick and firm enough to hold the weight of the cake…don’t use a thin, flimsy board. I also covered my board with black wrapping paper and then with clear contact paper. You can see how to do that here.)
  • 6″ cake round and 8″ cake round
  • 3 cake layers
  • Buttercream or Ganache
  • Icing spatula
  • Knife for carving
  • Buttercream smoother
  • Orange and black fondant
  • Letter cutters
  • Large fondant roller
  • Fondant smoother
  • Exacto knife
  • Almond bark (for covering the cake balls)
  • Misc. toppings for cake balls like mini chocolate chips, melted white chocolate, shredded coconut, chopped peanuts etc.
  • Halloween candy (I used candy corn and candy pumpkins)
  • Toothpicks

MAKING THE BUCKET HANDLE:

The very first thing you want to do is to make the bucket handle. It needs time to dry completely and firm up.

You can use gumpaste or fondant for the handle, but it’s better if you can use gumpaste, or at least add in some tylose powder to fondant, so it will firm up more.

So, my point is to make the handle several days ahead of time. If you’re traveling with this cake, I would wait to add the handle to it until you’re at the event.

Take your black fondant or gumpaste and roll it into a log. Cut the ends straight across.

Shape it around a small plate, so it has a good curve to it. Make sure that the space between the two ends is about 8″ because that’s about how wide the top of the bucket cake will be.

Oh and it’s handy if you have a piece of foam to dry it on. It dries throughout better that way.

making the handle to the trick or treat bucket

Once you’ve got the fondant shaped, you can add in some toothpicks to the ends.

adding toothpicks to the trick or treat cake handle

Now just leave it on the foam for a couple days to firm up and dry very very well.

MAKING THE TRICK OR TREAT BUCKET CAKE:

Set down an 8″ cake round and stack and fill three layers of 8″ cakes on it.

Add a small amount of buttercream to the top.

stack and fill three layers of cake

Set a 6″ cake round on top.

add a six inch cake board on top

Now you’ll take your large knife and carve off the cake at an angle from the smaller board on top (6″ board) to the larger board on the bottom (the 8″ board)

carving the trick or treat cake

It’s going to look like this:

carved trick or treat bucket cake

Make sure to keep the cake scraps! You’ll use them later.

save the cake scraps

Now set the cake in the fridge to chill for just a bit.

I don’t like to chill my cakes very much while decorating. The reasons are many, but if you’re interested in why and the problems it could cause, you can check out that post here.

Anyway, you do however want to chill this one for just a bit. Maybe 20-30 minutes. The reason is that you’ve just carved this cake and it’s gonna get real crumbly on you when you go to ice it if you don’t chill it just a bit.

Now cover you cake in buttercream, or you could use ganache as well. I prefer ganache under fondant, but I didn’t have enough chocolate to make it so I went with buttercream.

Remember you’re only covering the sides here. Leave the cake board on the top and one on the bottom.

smooth buttercream around cake

Do one layer, then another thicker layer and smooth it really well with a buttercream smoother.

smooth buttercream around trick or treat cake

Right now, you’re looking at the bucket cake upside down. The small (bottom end) is up. That’s what you want at this point. You’ll flip it over in a bit.

Chill your cake while you roll out fondant. You don’t want to chill it long, just for about 20 minutes or so, so that it’ll firm up a bit for the fondant.

Now just roll out your orange fondant.

roll out orange fondant

Dampen a paper towel and lightly press onto your cake. This just adds a little moisture so that the fondant will stick to your cake.

moisten cake to add fondant

Add your fondant over the cake. Leave that cake board on and just lay the fondant over the whole thing.

cover trick or treat cake with fondant

Smooth it around the sides of the cake with your hands first.

smooth fondant around trick or treat cake

Then cut off the excess fondant.

cut off excess fondant

Now take your fondant smoother and smooth around the cake very well.

use fondant smoother to smooth around trick or treat cake

Cut off the excess around the bottom. It’s helpful to use a pizza cutter for this.

cut off excess fondant with a pizza cutter

Now take your exacto knife or some other sharp knife and cut off the top around that 6″ cake board.

cut fondant off the top of the cake

Keep going around the top, trimming off any excess fondant as you go.

cut and trim fondant off the top of cake

Take your fondant smoother and smooth the fondant around the sides of the cake again.

smooth fondant around the cake again

Now add a little melted candy melts onto your final cake board and flip your cake over so that the 6″ cake board (the smaller end of the bucket cake) is attached to the board.

attach trick or treat cake to cake board

Now take a knife and run it around that top 8″ cake board. You’re going to be taking it off the cake, because you don’t need it on there now.

taking top cake board off cake

Once that top board is off, take your knife and go in about an inch from the edge of the cake and cut in about an inch.

cut in about an inch inside the edge of the cake

Now carve out the inside of where you just cut, but only about an inch of cake. Make sure to keep the cake cutoffs though, because you’ll use them later in the tutorial.

spoon out about an inch deep of cake

It should look like the pic below. You only want to dig out about an inch of cake. It will have an inch around the edge of the cake that is taller than the middle of the cake.

cut out top inch of cake

Now cover the top in buttercream. If it crumbles on you, just chill it a bit and thin your buttercream.

cover top with chocolate buttercream

Now roll out a thick log of orange fondant. You’ll want it to be at least 8″ long. Now just wrap this log of fondant around the top edge of your cake (the 1″ taller portion of the cake).

add orange fondant log to top of cake

Wrap it all around the top and then trim the ends and attach them to each other with water.

attach the ends of the orange logs

Now roll out a skinny log of orange fondant.

roll out a thin log of orange fondant

Attach with a bit of water around the top of the bucket cake right under the larger log of orange fondant.

attach the thin rope of fondant around the cake

Make sure to smooth everything when you get it attached.

smooth around the cake

Now roll out black fondant and cut out the letters for Trick or Treat.

cut out black fondant letters

Attach the letters to the cake with water or shortening. I used water but in hindsight, shortening is better because you can move the letters around and adjust them. If you use water, it’s stuck where you put it.

attach black fondant letter to trick or treat cake

MAKING THE CAKE BALLS:

To make the cake balls, take your cake scraps (what you cut off the cake earlier) and add about a tablespoon or two of buttercream and mix up very well.

Roll them into balls and then dip them into melted almond bark or chocolate.

dip cake balls into almond bark

Then you can sprinkle on mini chocolate chips, coconut, chopped nuts, melted white chocolate, or anything else you want to add to them.

sprinkle ingredients onto cake balls

Now pop the cake balls in the fridge to chill.

PUTTING THIS CAKE TOGETHER:

Now add candy corn and/or candy pumpkins to the top of your cake.

adding candy corn to trick or treat cake

Now add in the cake pops.

add in the cake pops

Add in candy corn to any bare spots.

add in candy corn to bar spots

Now just make sure the handle you made at the beginning is completely firm and dry.

Even when you’ve dried it for several days, it’s really best to add it right before your event or part so that it doesn’t have time to droop or bend on you somehow. You never know how humid it will be in a place.

So just take the handle and push the toothpicks into the top sides of the cake.

adding the handle to the trick or treat bucket cake
process shot collage for making a trick or treat bucket cake

And now it’s ready for a party!

Trick or treat bucket cake

I hope you have a lot of fun with this one and feel free to change up the look of it and make it your own. 🙂

Trick or treat bucket cake for halloween
trick or treat halloween cake pin

« Measuring Ingredients For Baking Cakes
Printable Halloween Cupcake Toppers (Black Cat) »
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Filed Under: Cake Decorating Tagged With: cakes for kids, fall cakes and recipes, fondant tutorials, Halloween cakes and recipes

Reader Interactions

Comments

  1. Rebecca

    October 11, 2019 at 7:21 am

    I love it! The cake is so cute!!!

    Reply
    • Kara Jane

      October 11, 2019 at 7:35 pm

      Thanks so much! ?

      Reply
  2. Adewuyi

    October 11, 2019 at 12:32 pm

    Thanks for this amazing tutorial. I enjoyed ever subscribing to your channel. Looking forward to try this out. And oops!! Lest I forget, please I will so much appreciate if you can make a video tutorial on bottled wine too….thanks.

    Reply
    • Kara Jane

      October 11, 2019 at 7:36 pm

      Thanks so much and I’m so glad you are liking the tutorials. ? I will try to get a wine bottle cake on my to-do list!

      Reply
  3. Sheila H

    October 11, 2019 at 7:48 pm

    Can you give us an idea of how much orange fondant n black fondant you used or started with please?

    Reply
    • Kara Jane

      October 11, 2019 at 7:58 pm

      Hey Sheila, yes that’s a good question. I should have weighed it and noted the amount, but it completely slipped my mind. I probably used maybe about a pound and a half of the orange fondant. It was about two heaping hand-fulls (not a technical measurement, but that’s my best guess here). You can get a better idea from the video the size and amount of it. For the black fondant, you only need a small amount because the letters don’t need to be thick…so maybe about a palm full of fondant. For the handle, a good handful should do. I’m sorry I’m not too technical on the measurement amounts. I’ll try to keep that in mind next time and start doing a better job at weighing the fondant. I usually just eyeball the measurements and really don’t weigh it…I just sort of guess the amount I need. Anyway I hope this helps at least a little!

      Reply
  4. Beverly Chester

    October 12, 2019 at 2:08 pm

    Do you have a special recipe for the actual chocolate cake used for the inside of the bucket?

    Reply
    • Kara Jane

      October 12, 2019 at 2:15 pm

      For this cake I had a limited amount of time to get it done, so I just used a chocolate cake mix. That’s not my preference, but it does work. My favorite chocolate cake recipe is here though: https://iscreamforbuttercream.com/chocolate-butter-cake/

      Reply
  5. Maahi

    October 23, 2019 at 6:50 am

    This cake looks so beautiful and perfectly baked! I will definitely bake this bucket cake on my daughters birthday, she’ll just love it ❤️

    Reply
    • Kara Jane

      October 23, 2019 at 12:51 pm

      Thanks! I hope she loves it!

      Reply

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Hey there, I’m Kara!

Hi, I'm so glad you're here! Cake shows up at our most important and happiest moments in life, like birthdays, weddings, baby showers and holidays. It's also for those everyday moments...it makes them even better. Put simply, cake just makes us happy! I love trying out new cake flavor combinations and decorating ideas. Have a look around and I bet you can find a cake recipe or tutorial for any of life's big moments and those everyday moments too. Click here if you want to learn more about me!

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