Black Cat Cake Video Tutorial - with Pumpkin and Chocolate Cake recipes (2024)

This black buttercream Cat Cake is super simple to make. With layers of pumpkin and chocolate cake inside it’s perfect for the fall and Halloween. With a full video tutorial including recipes and instructions on how to get black frosting!

How I created this black cat cake.

honestly I was looking to do a twist on the popular unicorn cakes for various holidays. I’d been trying to think of something that hadn’t already been overly done when my daughter asked if we could make a special treat together for National Cat day. Yes it’s a thing… Anyway we have 3 cats, 2 are pure black and my daughter LOVES them. So basing a cake off your pet isn’t too weird is it? So the two ideas came together beautifully. And because it’s fall we decided to fill the cake with alternating pumpkin and chocolate layers. But of course you could do just chocolate, or any other flavor as well.

After leveling the cake layers I sliced them in two to get even thinner layers so that the slice of cake would have fun thin lines. BUT for stability, esp with tall narrow cakes, I’d probably leave them full thickness next time. My daughter loves fondant and wanted to cover the whole cake in black fondant but I wanted to share how I achieve black frosting instead. It’s easier than you think BUT it’s a huge mess! Even now I’m still finding blobs of black frosting everywhere!

Just take me to the Recipes and video already!

If you’d rather skip my written tips and tricks for making this cake and links to other great cake recipes and tutorials and get straight to this delicious recipe – simply scroll to the bottom of the page where you can find the printable recipe card with the full video tutorial.

Tips for baking face cakes – like this cat or unicorn cakes

• Make it TALL… the end result of these face cakes looks so much better when the cake is tall vs short and squatty.
• Use smaller pans – if you start with 8 inch cakes you’ll want it to be about 10 inches tall to get that tall look THAT is a lot of cake. That’s why I use 7 inch layers, I’m only trying to get about 8-9 inches tall and it’s amazing how just a few inches taken off all the sides uses much less batter! Personally I think 6 inches is a little TOO small, and can get a little unstable that narrow but I’ve made it work before.
• Prepare your baking pans with non stick spray (I like bakers joy) and parchment circles underneath and use
• make the ears and other decorations that you want to hold their shape (like a horn or if your making the whiskers out of fondant) early and lay on something that will hold their shape (like a rolling pin for the ears) – the day before is best, but even just a few hours will help.
• For fondant decorations that will sit against the cake – the eyes in this case – you have 2 options – make it at the end when you can put the fresh shape right onto the cake so they wrap around the form or make them early and let them dry. IF you make them early don’t let them dry flat – they wont look right when you go to add them to the cake. Instead let them dry around the outside of the cooled cake pan.
• use a bench scraper to smooth the buttercream OR use fondant – you want a smooth surface with nice corners the face.
• here is the cat eyes, ears and nose pdf I created if you want to use them!

If you love Cake you’ll love these other decadent recipes and tutorials too!

Ultimate Peanut Butter Cake | Rich Dense Chocolate cake with Ganache Buttercream | Cinnamon chocolate chip cake

Mickey Mouse Jack O Lantern Cake | Lego Head Cake | Santa Head Cake

To watch me make this cake with my daughter play the video in the recipe card