A few years back, I dreamed up this monster cake with colorful shag monsters and googly eyes. It’s one of my favorite Halloween cakes to date, and since I love the monster concept so much, I thought I’d do another variation of it. This time, I used the same piping techniques you see in my fiber art cake tutorial, added some googly eye sprinkles, and watched the monsters come to life with a variety of fun textures. How cute would this be on a Halloween party table?!
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This monster cake design is really forgiving and go-with-the-flow, aka my favorite kind of cake project. You’ll essentially whip up a fun buttercream color palette (I made five colors) and use them with 6+ different piping tips to create the different monster shapes. After all the piping, it’s so much fun to add eye sprinkles onto each monster. I got creative with the eyeball amount, size, and placement as I went along. This sprinkle eyeball kit has a good variety of sizes that will keep things interesting. I had some colored sprinkle eyeballs left over from a different Halloween project so I added some of those in as well.
What Kind of Buttercream Works Best?
You can use any kind of buttercream you’re used to piping with, but I went with my vanilla buttercream recipe (for the majority of the colored buttercream) + my dye-free black buttercream recipe for the black piping. These are both medium-consistency American buttercream recipes, which are very easy to work with and hold the shapes of what you’re piping.
You Will Need
- A cake that’s been crumb coated and chilled (mine is a 3-layer 6-inch).
- Cake turntable
- 3 Cups of vanilla buttercream
- 1 Cup of black buttercream
- Bowls and spoons for color mixing
- Food color gels of your choice
- Piping bags
- Piping Tips: Wilton 1M, 4B, 10, 104, 233, and 16
- Googly eye sprinkles
Step 1: Prepare the Buttercream
You can mix up any color palette you want, but if you want to replicate this look, I divided the vanilla buttercream between four different bowls and added a few drops of each of these colors (one color per bowl): AmeriColor Deep Pink, Orange, Electric Green, and Electric Purple.
You’ll then want to place each color into a separate piping bag fitted with the following piping tips: black buttercream with Wilton Tip 1M, green buttercream with tips 104 and 16, pink buttercream with tip 10, orange buttercream with tip 233, and purple buttercream with tip 4B.
Step 2: Pipe the Monster Shapes
With your chilled and crumb coated cake on the turntable, pipe the monster shapes one by one. First, I used the black buttercream with Tip 1M to pipe three snakelike monster shapes. I literally just squeezed the piping bag and dragged it into a snake shape, twisting and turning wherever my heart desired.
Next, I used Wilton Tip 104 with the green buttercream to create the scaly buttercream. I squeezed the piping bag while I moved my hand in an upside-down “u” (or rainbow) shape over and over.
I then piped stars in blob-like shapes using the purple buttercream and Tip 4B, then shag using Tip 233 and the orange buttercream, and pink dots in blob-like shapes using Tip 10.
Now is the part where you have to get creative filling in empty spaces. I ended up using more green buttercream fitted with Tip 16 and piping curly shapes wherever it felt right. Every other space was filled in with what made the most sense.
Step 3: Place the Googly Eyes
Once you have filled in every inch of the cake surface with monster shapes, it’s time to add googly eyes! Use your imagination as you place the eye sprinkles – some monsters might have three eyes, some might have one giant eye, and others might have two. It’s all up to you!
Isn’t this monster cake the cutest? I hope to see it in all sorts of color palettes. The details are just so fun and the overall design doesn’t take a whole lot of work, so it’s perfect for beginners!
If you make this buttercream monster cake, I want to know how it goes! Leave a comment below and be sure to tag @sugarandsparrowco on Instagram if you share it. I love to see your cake creations!
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