Ladies, gentlemen, and everything in between, welcome to the final Halloween recipe of the 2024 season. It’s sad, because I sort of feel like this month has been wasted somewhat. It’s my favorite month in the entire year, and although it had some highlights, it has really just been a difficult month for me. I’ve been in a bit of a slump.
But slumps happen and this is my official announcement that I am snapping out of this slump. I have a four day weekend at the end of this week, which will give me some time to really focus and get back on track. Maybe writing this down will help make sure I actually get things done.
Anyway, this post isn’t about looking into the next few months, it’s about Halloween. More specifically, it’s about Nightmare Before Christmas and how it has and always will be one of my favorite Halloween movies. I watch it every year, without fail. It’s just such a classic. So when I decided I was doing a movie theme this October, I knew exactly what I was going to do as my big “finale.”
I hadn’t decided on a flavor for this cake until the day before I started testing it. I didn’t want another pumpkin cake because I already did two of those this season, but I didn’t want plain old chocolate or vanilla. Then I remembered that in the movie, Sally is stuffed with autumn leaves. So, I decided the cake should be the most “autumn leaf” adjacent flavor I could think of, spiced apple butter! But don’t worry guys, it doesn’t taste like dead leaves.
Describe this Cake to Me:
Taste: Although the look of this cake sort of steals the show, the flavor is pretty dang tasty too. Brown butter, autumnal spices, apple butter, and plenty of brown sugar create a perfect cozy fall cake. The fudge filling makes sure the cake isn’t too sweet, and the simple vanilla buttercream really ties it all together.
Texture: The cake is soft, moist, and fluffy, but still stable enough to sustain the complicated design. The fudge filling will harden up as it cools, but when you take a bite it just melts in your mouth, mixing with the creamy vanilla frosting.
Ease: The cake and fudge filling are both extremely simple, the problem arises with the decoration. I won’t lie, it took me a few hours. You’ve got a lot of different colors, designs, and steps to keep it clean, but with time and patience it should all come together.
The Batter
This batter is an adaptation of my classic vanilla cake, with a handful of alterations to make it perfect for fall. Brown salted butter adds this unique nutty flavor, which compliments the cinnamon, ginger, cloves, and nutmeg perfectly. Then you have the refreshing sweetness from the apple butter, which really just takes these flavors to the next level.
The Fudge Frosting
This fudge frosting is a real “trust the process” kind of situation. It’s only four ingredients; chocolate chips, sour cream, espresso powder, and vanilla. When you fold the sour cream into the melted chocolate, it will immediately seize up and get all clumpy. But if you just keep mixing in the sour cream slowly, it should come together and give you a thick chocolate fudge filling. Its main purpose in the cake is to offer a really steady support to keep the layers from sliding, and to cut through the sweetness in the frosting.
The Vanilla Frosting
This is a super straightforward frosting, just butter, shortening, sugar, heavy cream, vanilla, and food coloring. The butter is there for texture and flavor, and the shortening is there to make the frosting a little more sturdy for the piped details. A little trick of mine is that I like to add a Tablespoon or so of hot water to my frostings, which helps loosen it up. As for the decoration itself there are a few steps you can do to make it easier. Have all your frostings in piping bags and ready to go, make sure you have a very clean crumb coat, and draw an outline of your stitches and color block before you commit to frosting. And TAKE YOUR TIME. This is the most important thing and ensures you will have a neat finish.
Sally Stitch Cake
Ingredients
Apple Butter Cake
- ½ cup salted butter
- 3 ⅔ cup cake flour
- 2 teaspoons baking powder
- ¾ teaspoon baking soda
- 3 teaspoons ground cinnamon
- 1 teaspoon ground ginger
- ¼ teaspoon ground cloves
- ¼ teaspoon ground nutmeg
- 1 teaspoon salt
- 1 cup unsalted butter at room temperature
- 1 ½ cups granulated sugar
- 3 large eggs at room temperature
- 2 large egg whites at room temperature
- 2 teaspoons vanilla extract
- ¾ cup apple butter
- 1 cup buttermilk at room temperature
Fudge Frosting
- 1 ½ cups bittersweet or semisweet chocolate chips
- 1 cup sour cream
- 1 teaspoon espresso powder
- 1 teaspoon vanilla
Vanilla Frosting
- 2 ½ cups unsalted butter
- 1 cup vegetable shortening
- 5 cups confectioners sugar
- ¼ cup cold heavy cream
- 1 Tablespoon boiling water
- 1 teaspoon vanilla extract
- a pinch of salt
- yellow, pink, blue, and black food coloring
Instructions
Start by browning the butter
- Begin melting the salted butter in a medium sized saucepan over medium heat. Once melted, keep cooking the butter until it starts to sizzle and foam. Begin stirring constantly as you keep cooking it and you will notice brown solids forming at the bottom of the saucepan. Keep cooking until those solids turn a deep amber color and the butter has a nutty aroma. Remove from the heat and pour into a small bowl. Place in the fridge for 10 minutes to cool before using in the cake
Make the batter
- Preheat the oven to 350℉. Grease three 8-inch round cake pans with butter, line the bottoms with parchment paper, and then grease the parchment paper. Set aside.
- In a medium sized bowl, whisk together the cake flour, baking powder, baking soda, cinnamon, ginger, cloves, nutmeg, and salt until combined. Set aside.
- In a large mixing bowl using a hand or stand mixer fitted with a paddle attachment, mix together the unsalted butter and granulated sugar on medium high speed until fluffy and combined. Pour in the cooled brown butter and mix until just combined. Add in the eggs, egg whites, and vanilla and mix until combined. The mixture may look a little curdled, that's ok! Finally, mix in the apple butter.
- With the mixer running on low speed, pour the dry ingredients into the wet ingredients and mix until just combined. Then, with the mixer still running on low speed, slowly stream in the buttermilk, and mix until just combined. Divide the batter evenly among the previously prepared baking pans. Bake for 23-26 minutes or until the cakes are pulling away from the sides of the pan, and they bounce back when lightly poked. Allow the cakes to cool completely in the pans set on a wire cooling rack before frosting.
Make the chocolate frosting
- In a large microwave safe mixing bowl, melt the chocolate chips in the microwave in 30 second increments, stirring after each until completely melted and smooth. Whisk the sour cream in, a dollop at a time, until thick and creamy. It will seize up at the beginning, and it won't look like it's going to come together, but I promise it will if you keep mixing in the sour cream slowly. Once all of the sour cream is incorporated, whisk in the espresso powder and vanilla extract.
Assemble
- I like to slice a thin layer off of the tops of my cakes to create a smooth surface, but this is optional. Place one cake layer on your cake stand and spread half of the chocolate frosting on top. Place another cake layer on top and spread the remaining chocolate frosting smoothly on top. Place the final cake layer on top of that and stick the cake in the freezer to firm up while we quickly make the frosting.
Make the frosting
- In a large bowl using a hand or stand mixer fitted with a whisk attachment, whip the butter and shortening together on medium speed until combined and creamy, about two minutes. Add the confectioners sugar, heavy cream, boiling water, vanilla extract, and salt. Mix on low speed for 30 seconds before turning up to high speed to whip for 1-2 minutes or until light and fluffy. Don't color any of the frosting yet, we'll do that after the crumb coat.
- Spread a very thin layer of the frosting on the top and sides of the cake. You should still be able to see some of the cake poking through, the crumb coat just gives you a smooth surface for the intricate piping later. I use a bench scraper to make sure the frosting is perfectly smooth. Place the cake in the freezer while we dye the remaining frosting.
- Split the frosting among four mixing bowls. Dye one quarter teal, another pink, another yellow, and the last one black. I add a Tablespoon or two of cocoa powder to the black one to help it get to the right color. Put each frosting into their own piping bag, each fitted with a small round tip. I used Wilton #10 for all four colors.
- Remove the cake from the freezer. Using a toothpick, trace out your "patches" on the tops and sides of the cake. They don't have to be super precise, just try and make them different shapes and sizes. I like to put a little dot of each color frosting in each section to map out what color each one will be.
- Carefully pipe and spread the different colored frostings among the different "patches" on the cake. It's ok if the sections aren't perfectly smooth. Using the black frosting, pipe and out line around where the "Stitches" would be to separate the different colors. Pipe little horizontal lines on top of this black outline to be the "stitches". Finally, using the black frosting, pipe different simple patterns in a few of the colored patches to resemble the different patterns on Sallys dress. I did some spirals, dots, zig zags, grids, and stripes. Freeze the cake for 10 minutes to firm up the frosting and serve!