Brain Cake

Making a Brain cake is fun, cheap and great for Halloween parties or get-togethers. This is a basic instructable to show you how to make the details for this cake, the size and shape depends on your preferences. You can do similar designs for cupcakes or even flat cakes depending on what best fits your needs. This cake is made from two 8 inch pan cakes that were cut and assembled together to make a more realistic brain cake. The gore is also optional, although it does make the cake look more grusome and realistic.

Step 1 Ingredients

Here are the Basic Ingredients that you will need, however depending on what kind of cake mix or cake recipe you use it will vary.
1. Cake Mix + necessary ingredients (follow the instructions on your recipe or box)
2. Frosting (we bought ours but feel free to mix your own
3. Mini Marshmallows (a whole package preferably)
4.Powdered Sugar
5. Cake dye, especially the colors green and red.
6. Oil (to grease your hands with later)

Comments

[drainer1]

This is such an amazing cake!!! I made this for my friends 25th birthday - themed Zombie. Was a MAJOR success, no one had any idea I was doing it & I got a standing ovation so that was pretty swell.
Just as a point of note, my cake was pretty big & I made my own marshmallow & there was HEAPS of it. It tasted great making it myself but be warned, it makes the process of turning it into a taffy like consistency a VERY painful job, with the recipe I went with, it took about 8 packets of icing sugar (powdered sugar) to turn get it to how I needed it. The whole decorating process took me hours & I was pretty exacting with the blood. But in the end major success, I was happy as was the birthday boy! Also took a chunk out where a "zombie" had bitten into it.
Also used heated jam instead of frosting to stick it to the cake.

[tinker234]

i saw a skull pan online now i guess i can make a head cake

[kahaynes]

This is the "zombie brain" cake I made for my husband's Walking Dead birthday party this year. These instructions were great! Since the cake was green velvet (used green dye rather than red) I made cream cheese marshmallow fondant, and I thickened the blood mixture with a little cornstarch and added some vanilla to taste. Otherwise, I followed this exactly, and it turned out wonderful!

[Shelby_Galloway]

I loved this cake! My only thing I would add to this recipe is a detailed ingredients list. Since this was my first attempt to make anything like this . . . I used:

*Two boxes of cake mix
*Three bags of marshmallow
*A bag and a half of powdered sugar
*Two and a half containers of frosting

That might just be my inexperience . . . But it was HUDGE! Ha Ha. Otherwise it was a major success. Great Cake!

[mryan15]

I made the brainiest brain cake ever. Thanks so much for these instructions! It went perfect with our mad-scientist themed Halloween party.

[magwheels662000]

My daughter wanted a zombie birthday party and this cake was perfect for her. I used whipped cream frosting and tinted it gray. I used 3 layers and trimmed it into the brain shape - filling each layer with cherry pie filling for the 'bleeding' effect. I drizzled some additional filling down the sides.

the kids loved it. Thanks for the idea.

Maggie

[jadekikyo]

This is going to sound weird but my 4yr old little girl would LOVE this as her birthday cake. She's almost a halloween baby and her personality shows it, lol.

[CanningGirl]

the cakes are awesome i love them

[bkr1969]

Nice idea.  Made one for a Christmas party (hosted by a neurosurgeon).  Went over great. I did mine with 3 layers vertically instead of horizontal.  That gave me more height, though getting it to stand up took a bit of thought.

[kiffakitty]

haha, a Christmas party with a brain cake sounds awesome!

[iamhungry]

WOW!!!! Great Job!!! I think I might have you make me one for haloween. JK

[zcaper]

i made a vegan version of this for my friend's birthday complete with a chocolate knife in the top and raspberry bloody filling. if you use vegan marshmallows for the fondant, you need to add some shortening to make it come together in the right consistency.

[kiffakitty]

That is really awesome! I love the details! It looks like you even shaded the squiggly parts with shades of pink. :D

[pyho2007]

Here's my brain-cake.  Making fondant from scratch is definitely a challenge but well worth it.

[WhyHello]

you should leave that in front of a police station "a gift for our officers" XP

[kiffakitty]

 wow thats great! i love the shape of it, very realistic

[kwnstant!na]

I unfortunately don't own a microwave oven.
Could I use the regular oven instead ?
Will it work the same way ?

[kiffakitty]

You could heat it up on a stove top. The important thing is to have melted marshmallows, the technique isn't really important.

[ahouse18]

Thanks so much for the instruction! We made it for my 9 year old's birthday/Halloween party. The funny thing is, I spent a few hours putting it together - I used 3 layers to make it tall (and strawberry cake on the inside), we unveiled it, and all of the boys at the party were so grossed out by it that they just had ice cream!! Thanks again for a fun memory.

[the_burrito_master]

I wouldn't eat it ether, just knowing that there's fondant on it grosses me out.

[kiffakitty]

haha! no one really wanted to eat our cake either! My friend's 13 year old sister was especially grossed out :)
I guess you have to be a zombie lover at heart to truly enjoy this!

[annafrank]

look so scary) great idea
http://oops-news.ru/

[Strapped-4-Cache]

Great instructable! I *mostly* followed the directions, but I placed my cake rounds on their side after cutting, creating the two hemispheres. After placing the fondant on them the two began to spread apart, but the effect was actually pretty neat and made it more realistic. Instead of knives I uses a little sign saying, "Zombie Special - FRESH BRAINS!!!"

Thanks for the idea. It was a winning entry in our office "creepy dessert" contest.

[sarahu]

:) made one thanks for the instructable

[ziggiau]

Could you just make the marshmallow from scratch? It's easy enough to do (this Instructable seems to do the trick - http://www.instructables.com/id/Homemade-Flavored-Marshmallows/) and maybe you could modify the ingredients (less liquid, more sugar) to get you to the correct consistency?

[kiffakitty]

this is actually just a quick and cheap way of making fondant, if you want to make it from scratch you could probably make fondant from a recipe-that would probably give you the best consistency. The fondant is usually too sweet to eat (it uses confectioner's sugar like flour in dough) so if it were me I'd make the delicious homemade marshmellows as another snack for the party-especially if they are cut out like little ghosts or pumpkins- that would be so cute!

[sadiecoons]

This would be cool for an april fools joke on your mom. Hehehe

[chefmojo]

So i made my own version! A zombie brain!!!

[emi8080]

awww. Gross but looks sooo real. I think i might pass....

[allison =D]

ewwwwwwwwwwwwwwwww lol I will defenetly be doing this for halloween also hehe

[KMOM14]

It looks so disgusting...I love it!  I think I will make one next Halloween.  Thanks for sharing it with us!

[avakatie]

FANTASTIC I so have to try this one :D

[IcenSheWolf]

This cake was a lot of fun to make! I'm glad I was there to help with the preparations!

[kcli]

If my ma cooked brains this way I'd be sure to eat 'em!

Best of luck in the contest...you deserve to win based on the bloody good looks alone!!!

[monaxle]

Thanks for this. We had as much fun making it as we did eating it! 

[kiffakitty]

 cool! nice picture

[7W47]

 

What a great idea! I used butter icing and piped it through the lid of a pop bottle. Thanks for the inspiration!

[domestic_engineer]

I'm so mad you beat me too it. I was in the middle of writing a brain cake instructable, and you posted yours. I guess gross minds think alike. Here is mine. It's made from a bunt cake, upside down, and shaped a little to look like a brain. then I used buttercream frosting to pipe on the brain lumps with the leaf tip. then used a writing tip to pipe on the veins.

yummmmm........................

[kiffakitty]

 lol sorry! ha ha i love the veins on your cake!

[momm]

It's braintastic; this opens up a door to so many ideas. You could build up enough layers of cake to carve out the dome shape of the brain and  pipe
on the blood mixture where needed (mushed strawberry preserve,red gel etc) Is it possible to make the fondant so that it can be piped on?