Easy Bat Cake - simple cut-apart cake for Halloween

Turn a 9 X 13 inch sheet cake into this adorable bat for your Halloween party. This easy bat cake can be made using a homemade chocolate cake or a cake mix and it’s decorated with deep dark black chocolate frosting for a decadent Halloween treat that kids and adults will love.

If you grew up in the 70’s chances are your mom made you a cut-apart birthday cake using a 9 by 13 inch sheet cake. They were so popular because they were so cute and pretty easy to make. I know my mom would have had fun making this Easy Bat Cake for Halloween.

Over the years here at Hungry Happenings I’ve shown you how to decorate some pretty time consuming cakes, but this year I decided to try to simplify things and have created a Rainbow Unicorn Cake, a Lamb Cake, and a Minion Cake using this simple cut-apart decorating technique.

The cakes look amazing yet take very little time to decorate. Who doesn’t love that?

When you make one of these cakes you cut a 9 by 13 inch cake into simple shapes, arrange them together, then decorate them with frosting. The unicorn and lamb cakes required just a few simple rectangle shapes for the body, head, and legs.

The minion required pieces of cake be glued together with frosting to make the hat. Then the arms and legs were made by actually blending some cake and frosting together so it could be shaped accordingly.

To make the easy bat cake you will need to cut out a rectangle body, two wings, and two ears. Once assembled you simply pipe on two big round eyes, cover the cake with black frosting then add a mouth, fangs, and two feet.

I like to use a piping bag and a star tip to decorate my cakes. For me it’s the easiest way to decorate a cake. You can, if you prefer, spread the frosting over the cake. I find that more challenging for some odd reason but you might like it better.

I also prefer to decorate a frozen cake. When a cake is firm it is so much easier to handle. This cake in particular was much easier to manipulate when frozen because of the thin points on the wings. I bake my cakes, let them cool, wrap them in plastic wrap and freeze for at least a few hours before decorating.

How to make an easy bat cake.

You’ll need:

9 by 13 inch sheet cake
2 1/2 cups chocolate frosting colored black spooned into a pastry bag fitted with a #18 star tip
1/2 cup white frosting spooned into a pastry bag fitted with a #18 star tip
cake board (13 inch by 19 inch rectangle)
long knife
round cookie cutters – 2 inch cutter for bat wings and 2 3/4 inch for eyes

Cuts:

Cut the rectangle cake in half widthwise.
Set one rectangle in the center of a cake board or serving platter. This is the bat’s body.
Cut the other rectangle cake in half diagonally.
Cut about 2 1/2 inches off the narrower tip of each of those cakes.
Cut those small tips into triangle shaped bat ears.
Cut the larger cake pieces into wings by using a round cookie cutter or knife.
Place one wing on either side of the body. You’ll have to flip one of the wings upside down before setting it on the cake board.
Attach two ears.

Start by creating the bats eyes near the top of the rectangle cake.
If needed, gently press a round cookie cutter into the cake creating a guide for you to follow.
Pipe two black pupils in the center of each eye using black frosting.
Pipe several rows of white frosting around the black pupil creating big eyes.
Pipe black frosting stars all over the rectangle cake.
Use some black frosting to attach the two wings and two ears to the rectangle cake.
Pipe black frosting stars all over the wings and ears.
Pipe a black mouth onto the bat.
Pipe on two white fangs.
Pipe two feet using black frosting.

NOTES:

To pipe stars onto the cake hold your tip just above the cake. Gently squeeze on the pastry bag allowing a star to form on the cake. Stop squeezing and pull the bag away from the cake. The frosting will form a peak and break off in a nice star shape.
The end of the wings are very thin. It will be easiest to pipe frosting at the base and up the sides of the wings before your pipe frosting on top of the wings.
To make the mouth show up a bit better, you can blend a bit of white and black frosting together to make gray frosting and use that to pipe on the mouth. The black mouth is easy to see on the cake when you are looking at it in person but it get’s lost in in the pictures and video.

Watch the video tutorial to see how to make this easy bat cake.

NOTES:

- Pipe two layers of frosting for the feet so that they have some dimension.
- You can see in the first picture the gray frosting mouth. Then at the end of the video you’ll see the black mouth. After shooting the footage I realized you couldn’t see the black mouth very well so I took it off and added the gray mouth.

If you want to make some more fun Halloween desserts and appetizers, be sure to check out my Halloween Recipes page. There are over 100 amazing food crafts for the holiday.

If you make this Easy Bat Cake and share pictures online be sure to mention Hungry Happenings and link back to this post. Also use the hashtag #HungryHappenings and send me a picture to beth@hungryhappenings.com so I can share it in my readers’ gallery.