Nightmare Before Christmas Cake

Hey ghouls and creeps! My earliest memory of Nightmare Before Christmas was that my parents refused to let me see it when it first came out because they were concerned it would freak me out. Flash forward 22 years and my husband would use the lyrics from Jack and Sally’s Song as part of his vows. Despite not getting to see it on it’s release date, when I did almost six years later, I was hooked! In short, you could call me a Tim Burton super fan. I’ve watched nearly all his movies, seen his art exhibits in New York, NY, Las Vegas, NV, and Anaheim, CA. I’ve bought the merch/movies/soundtracks, gone to theater and orchestra performances of Nightmare, and dressed as a Burton character at least five Halloweens and counting.

But I digress, I get a little carried away sometimes when talking about Tim Burton and his inspiring work, so I’m going to bring this tangent back around. For the reason that my husband is obviously a Nightmare/Burton super fan too, I wanted to bake him a Nightmare Before Christmas cake in honor of his birthday!

Per his request, he wanted a chocolate cake with peppermint-flavored buttercream, which I typically bake in December, but have neglected to the last couple years. The primary purpose of this post is to go over the decorating techniques I used, not so much to divulge a from-scratch recipe for a cake. The cake is a Betty Crocker cake mix, and the peppermint buttercream recipe is from the picky-palate blog. I did substitute candy cane flavored candy melts in place of crushed peppermint to eliminate the crunch. Let’s get started!

This recipe is really easy, and doesn’t require a bunch of ingredients. Pro tip: Try baking your cake the night prior to decorating so that the cake can chill prior to decorating.

Step 1: Bake the Cake: Using the instructions on the cake mix, I combined the mix, water, vegetable oil, and eggs in a large bowl. Make sure to preheat your oven to the specified temperature. Mix the ingredients together with a mixer for approximately two minutes, or until all lumps are gone from the batter.

Grease pan prior to pouring in batter. Pour batter into Bundt pan, evenly distributing it so that it’s level.

Once the oven has reached the needed temperature, place pan in oven and bake for the time mentioned on mix package. Once the cake has baked thoroughly, allow cake to cool in pan for 20-30 min prior to removing from pan. To remove the cake, flip the pan over a dinner plate so that the cake lands on the plate.

Clean the pan of cake residue and grease and use as a cover over cake. Place cake in refrigerator to chill overnight.

Step 2: Make your Frosting: This frosting recipe is from the Picky-Palate blog, and super tasty! You may notice that I did use candy cane flavored candy melts in place of crushed peppermint recommended by the Picky-Palate, mostly because that’s what I had available. Combine all ingredients into a large mixing bowl and mix together until thoroughly blended.

I did add some white icing color, which is not required, but creates more contrast between the frosting and cake decorations later.

I then evenly applied the icing using a frosting spatula. Pro tip: Icing sticking too much to your spatula? Dip the spatula in a cup of water and repeat while applying frosting. Cover your cake completely with frosting, making sure to get sides and inside thoroughly.

Step 3: Decorate the Cake: Cut tip off icing bag, creating an opening approximately an 1/8” wide. Take a cup and use to hold open your icing bag. Fill bag with chocolate frosting about half to two-thirds full.

Squeeze frosting in an even line from bag and go back and forth over cake until you go all the way around.

Shake sprinkles over top of cake until coated to your preference.

Print the PDF below to use as a guide to make your candy melts cake decoration. Once printed, cover with wax paper, place on small cookie sheet, and set aside while you melt candy melts.

Warm candy melts in microwave-safe bowl until they begin to melt, then stir together to melt all melts completely (I used about half the bag).

Cut tip off another icing bag, also with an 1/8” opening. Place bag in cup, and use a spatula to spoon in melted melts. Once all melts are in bag squeeze bag to evenly trace spiral hill outline. I filled in the spiral hill as well to give the decoration more strength.