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This week’s obsession: BoOoOoOk!

It’s here! My final Hocus Pocus themed creation for October! It’s a “BoOoOoOk!” Cake!

I brought this cake to a rooftop party with neighbors who are mostly just a smidge older than I am, but they had no idea what this cake was.

So I'll explain: Book is a character in both Hocus Pocus movies. In the movie, it is said that this spellbook is written in blood and bound in human skin. The reason I titled this post with so many “o”s is because when the character Winnifred calls for her spellbook, she drags it out and includes several musical notes as she does (I mean, she is played by Bette Middler. Could we expect anything other than that?!).

You’ll notice that this cake is covered in fondant which I very rarely work with. Mostly I hate working with fondant because it doesn’t taste very good, and I have a big problem with including things on my desserts that aren’t utterly decadent. But this cake would have been extremely difficult to do with just buttercream, and I’ve never even touched modeling chocolate before, so I have no clue if that’s something I could have coated this cake with (I guess I need to enroll in a modeling chocolate class soon!).


Truth be told, I actually had a good time recreating the metal decorative pieces. Tip of the week: typically for pieces like this you would use a combination called 50/50, which is a mixture of fondant and gum paste in a 1:1 proportion (hence the name 50/50). Gum paste is typically used to make flowers for big cake art displays because it dries really firmly. It is still edible, but I recommend eating it less than I recommend eating fondant. Seriously, you might chip a tooth.

Since I didn’t have any gumpaste handy, I chose to make my decorations 4 days in advance and allowed them to dry out over the remaining days until I needed them to decorate the cake. Decorating the cake went fairly smoothly until I took a look at the cake and realized he was too… clean.

Book in the movie looks a little dirty and worn and not at all as fresh as I originally created him to be.

Fortunately I have an entire container of Black Master Elite powdered food coloring from the Sugar Art (I don’t get paid for mentioning them, I just want you to know what products I use), that I brushed all over the cake to dirty him up a bit.

Everything except his eye, which I'm still not sure is up to snuff. I used fully white fondant for the eye and hand painted the iris and pupil on it once it dried, but to me it still looks a little too fresh. I couldn't put black powder on it though, so I just left it alone.


With that being said, we need to discuss the interior of this cake. All components of this cake are things I have never made before, so I’m really excited to actually cut into this thing and stuff it into my mouth. Don’t ask me why, but for some reason I really wanted to make a Butterfinger inspired cake. So I made a peanut butter cake, filled the layers with American buttercream and chopped up Butterfinger bars, and coated the whole cake in a chocolate and peanut butter buttercream.


When I tell you my house smelled like heaven this weekend… 😍

I think the end result came out pretty well - both the interior and exterior - and I was so proud to bring him to the party (until no one recognized him 😫). Anywho, I hope you enjoyed learning about this cake as much as I enjoyed making him.



Happy eating, y’all!


If you tried this dessert, or any other desserts in my blog, please share my Facebook, Twitter, or Instagram posts about them and let people know what you think! Mahalo!

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