Mutated Pork Head – Halloween Cake

Another Halloween, another one of my Halloween cakes. This year I went for a mutated pork head – delicious red velvet cake on the inside, disgusting pig head on the outside.

I love making realistic and gore cakes for Halloween and I have to give thanks to my family to always coming to our Halloween get-togethers and being brave enough to try a piece! My other cakes like Brain Cake, Zombie Pumpkin Cake or Human Heart Cake were a hit, so this year I decided to go for a mutated pork head with ulcers, crusts and cracks.

I made a risky decision to cover the cake with cream before covering it with fondant. The cream makes the fondant melt and crack in some places without damaging the whole coverage when applied with moderation. But anyway, I had to chill the cake very often as a prevention to too many cracks. I wanted to try this but if you want to play it safe, you can skip the step where I apply cream to the outside of the case and just not apply it and make the cracks in the fondant by hand.

I decided to bake a red velvet cake which proved to be good for larger structures that need to be shaped. I made the cream a little non-traditional with ingredients that I can get where I live but feel free to just make the red velvet cake and the cream you always make if you have a favorite recipe.

A small bonus to this tutorial is that there are no leftovers, I’m using even the parts I cut off the cake for the cake.

I have to admit that I have made several silly mistakes due to being in a hurry and not doing things properly. I should know better but the silver lining is that I can point them out to you. Also, none of them were fatal to the cake (but you better prevent them anyway).

S dortem jsem nakonec trochu spěchala, což vedlo k pár chybám, ke kterým muselo při zrychlené přípravě nevyhnnutelně dojít. Žádná z nich nebyla pro dort fatální, a aspoň vám je můžu popsat a zdůraznit, jak se jich vyvarovat.

If you’d like to try some more of my sweet and savory Halloween recipes such as Human Hand or Baby Foot in addition to the cakes, they are all here.

Eyes

1. Silicone mold for globes or half globes, diameter aprox. 4 cm/1.5 in
2. 1/2 cup of buttermilk or milk
3. gelatin in powder (you’ll need 3x to 4x as much as the instructions say for that 1/2 cup of milk)
4. 2 tsp of sugar
5. 1 tsp of vanilla extract
6. black gel food dye

Cake

1. Cake mold, diameter 22 – 25 cm/8.7 – 9.8 in (two molds are best but you can use one repeatedly)
2. 500 g/1.1 lb of plain flour
3. 500 g/1.1 lb of caster sugar
4. 1/2 tsp of salt
5. 1,5 tbsp of cocoa powder
6. 4 large eggs, room temperature
7. 400 g/0.9 lb of unsalted butter, softened
8. 400 ml/0.9 lb of buttermilk
9. 200 g/0.45 lb of sour cream
10. 2 tbsp of vinegar
11. 2 tsp of baking soda
12. red gel food dye
13. grease and flour for the pan

Cream

1. 400 g/0.9 lb of heavy cream
2. 1.050 g/2.3 lb of quark cheese or mascarpone
3. 250 g/0.6 lb of powder sugar
4. 120 g/0.3 lb of sour cream

Other

1. 500 g/1.1 lb of fondant, light skin color or light pink
2. 100 g/0.2 lb of modelling chocolate of the same color, you can make it with this tutorial.
3. gel food dye – black, red, brown – alternatively activated charcoal, cocoa powder, red jam
4. water
5. brushed
6. cake modelling tools

I have to gelatin eyeball tutorials, you can use them as inspiration if you want to use a different liquid or colors. They’re the Gelatin Eyeballs and the Gelatin Half-Eyeball.

And if not, just do the same I did:

Prepare the gelatin in the buttermilk following the instructions on the package, just use 3-4 times more to ensure a very firm eyeball. Put 2 tsp of this gelatin in another container and stir in 1 drop of black dye. Put half of the liquid in one mold and half in another to make a large pupil. Let it sit in the fridge for a few minutes to get firm.

The rest of the gelatin will stay white. Wait until it’s not warm anymore but also not set yet, it’s a small window. That is the time to pour in in the molds on the pupils.

And here comes my first mistake. Although the white gelatin was cooled down quite a bit, it was still a little warm and it melted the black pupil a little. Fortunately, not too much and it did not affect the pupil.

Let the eyeballs chill in the fridge, pop them out of the mold carefully and set them aside.

Grease the baking mold and then put some flour in it and distribute it all over the pan. This will prevent the cake from sticking to the mold. Set aside.

In a large bowl, combine all the dry ingredients. Pour the buttermilk in a cup and stir in the red food dye. In another bowl, whisk the butter until fluffy and then whisk in the other wet ingredients. Then gradually add the wet ingredients to the dry ingredients and combine well.

My second mistake was that I forgot to first combine the buttermilk and red dye. I had to add the dye to the batter and even though I tried, it didn’t distribute evenly.

Preheat the oven to 160°C/320°F. Pour the batter half and half into two molds or if you have just one mold, bake one half of the batter first and then the other. Bake for approximately 40 minutes. Do not rely on the time completely. Pinch the cake with a chopstick or a knife to the center and if the chopstick comes out clean, the cake’s done. If not, bake some more and check regularly. It’s good knowing your oven, we want the cake to bake slowly so the center doesn’t rise. You might even need to bake it on 150°C/302°F. The center of my cakes did rise but in my defense, my oven decided to stop working just before Halloween and I had to use another, much more potent oven.

Flip the mold upside down to the cake out and let it cool down on a rack. Then let them chill in the fridge for at least one hour. Cut each cake in half. I place a soup plate on the cake and use its edge as a guideline for the knife.

If the center of your cakes rose, just cut it flat. Do not throw away any pieces of the cake you cut off. Now you have 4 pieces of the red velvet cake.

Whip the heavy cream to firm peaks, then whisk in the rest of the ingredients. You’ll need most of the cream to put between the cake layers, some to spread on the cake when it’s shaped and some more for other small tasks which I’ll explain later.

Place one piece of cake in front of you and apply a layer about 2 cm/0.8 in layer of cream on it. Place another cake layer on the cream layer and this is how you connect all the layers. If you’re afraid your cake might fall apart, let it chill in the fridge after connecting every two cake layers, or – and better – use the cake mold to do all this, the mold will prevent the layers from sliding.

In the end, you will have four cake layers with three cream layers before them. Let the cake chill properly, even one hour in the freezer if it fits.

My next mistake was that the top layer cracked because I didn’t chill it enough. I patched the clacks with cream and placed the cake in the freezer and luckily, the cake was saved, it just doesn’t look good for the photo.

Let’s start shaping the head. Cut the cake in a sort of diamond shape like shown in the photo. This is why we want the cake properly chilled, only then can you shape it with a knife well. Then round the sharp edges (diagonal and vertical). Remember, we don’t dispose of or eat the cutoffs, we’ll still need those!

Now find the lower (narrower) edge of the diamond shape and leave about 10 cm/4 in from the edge uncut. Then start cutting diagonally down a little and then straight again. The tallest part will be the snout later.

Now cut also to the sides from the center of the tall part, leaving only a small flat spot in the center.

Now is time to model the snout and utilize the cutoffs. Place those in a bowl and just smash and squeeze them with your hand (just like when you want to make cake pops). If the mixture is too dry, add a little of the cream you saved earlier. Take some of this mixture to make a snout. When I made it, it resembled minced meat so much that I though it might look good to make the whole cake like this (but the red velvet in layers actually tastes better).

Sit the snout on the highest place of the cake.

Now use some more of the mixture and place if around the base of the snout to connect it to the cake. Then use the rest to create a gradual transition between the snout and the rest of the face.

Photos 7 and 8 show what the pork head should look like now.

Using a teaspoon, scoop out a hole on each side of the head, you could probably guess these will be the eye sockets.

Place the eyeballs in the sockets to see if it fits. Take them out again.

Gently press two dimples in the top of the snout as nostrils.

You can also cut under the nostrils where the mouth should be. This is an optional step, you can just make the dent in the fondant later.

Spread a thin layer over the whole pork head and let the cake chill very well. As I said this part is a little risky. If you use too much cream, you’ll have to chill the cake even every 5 minutes or just accept the fact that the fondant will crack and slide off the cake more than you’d like. I didn’t want to make the cake completely without the cream because I was afraid it would be too dry (but skip the cream if you don’t want to deal with the uncertainty) and I made the cream layer pretty thin (after taking this picture, I actually scraped some cream off).

Roll out the fondant and place it on the cake. From this moment, if you used the cream in the previous step, make sure to chill the cake every half an hour while working on it or even more frequently. I recommend placing it in the freezer for 10 minutes after every 15 minutes or work.

I transferred my cake onto a baking sheet and with it on a rotating plate to work more comfortably.

Smooth out the fondant in the direction from the snout to the front and eyes, then sides and last to the chin. The chin area is where you’ll have the most leftover fondant. You can cut some of it off and pleat the rest to create some skin pleats and creases. I placed some of the cut off fondant on the top of the snout, the transition of the two layers will be dried crust later.

Trim the excess fondant at the base of the cake and press the edges gently to the cake.

Cut holes in the fondant where the eye sockets are.

Press the nostrils again.

And also press the line of the mouth.

Place the eyeballs in the eye sockets.

For two round stripes of fondant around the eye, one under and one above.

Smoothen the edges until they blend with the fondant under them. If the fondant is too dry for that, take the newly added stripes off, mix them in your hand with just a little bit of cream and they will be more sticky and easy to blend into the face fondant. If you spread cream over the shaped pork head, your fondant will eventually crack in a few places and slide down a little (though it shouldn’t be too much if you didn’t use too much cream). So you can place these eyelids a little higher so they’re in the correct position when the slide.

Add one or two more layers and blend them in.

Apply a this layer of fondant mixed with cream where you want your pork head to have blood crusts. You can play with it, it doesn’t have to look exactly like mine.

Make ulcers by taking stripes of fondant, making small circles and placing them on the pig’s face. Blend the outside as well as inside of each ulcer.

Make as many as you wish and place them where you wish.

If you’ve used cream in that crucial step I keep mentioning, you should start seeing some cracks now. If you didn’t overdo it with the cream, those cracks will be perfect and fill not expand. If you see the cracks getting bigger and bigger, place the cake in the freezer more often or for more time. If you didn’t use cream, make some cracks in the fondant by had (but still place the cake in the freezer a few times for prevention).

You can use any food dye to pain the pig head, mixed with water or alcohol. I use cocoa powder for brown and red and black gel dye, everything mixed with water.

Start by painting the ulcers brown.

Pain the crusts and also around the eyes.

Red looks great on the eyeballs.

And wherever you want blood.

Paint the inside of the ulcers red as well.

You can use black for the nostrils but otherwise only for details – this lines in the cracks and creases and in the darkest spots of the places you painted brown and red.

Making ears is super easy. Just divide your modelling chocolate in half and make two balls. Then flatten each with your palm and shape it any way you like. Paint as you like and let the ears sit in the freezer for 10 minutes. Then just attach them to the base of the cake.

Your mutated pork head cake is done, now let’s creep out the guests!