There’s tons of reasons to bake something for and around Halloween. Pumpkin pies are always a favorite, as are apple pies. But when there’s a birthday to be celebrated, or a party to be thrown, only one dessert dish will truly satisfy the guests: cake!

But if you’re going to make a cake with a Halloween theme, it’s got to be scary and appropriate. You can't have a proper Halloween themed party without a little bit of spooky and scary mixed in!

That’s why Wholesale Party Supplies figured out how to spice up your ordinary cake for Halloween. This human heart cake is realistic and delicious! It'll spook your guests (and maybe gross them out a little), but it'll taste absolutely wonderful!

Step 1: Materials

What you’ll need:

Vanilla Cake Mix
Chocolate Cake Mix
Whole Milk
Light Corn Syrup
EggsChocolate & Vanilla Frosting
Cocoa Powder
Food Coloring
2lb Bag White Morsels
Food Safe Sculpting Tools

Step 2: Getting the Cake Started

To start off, we want to make the cake bread a deep blood red color. So we combined one box of vanilla cake, one box of chocolate cake, and enough red food coloring to achieve an appropriate color. We divided the batter between pans and baked. When the cake comes out of the oven, allow it to cool and then shave off the golden brown layer on the bottom and top so that the cake will be consistently red when cut into.

Next, combine one chocolate and one vanilla frosting with enough red food coloring to achieve that same blood red color. Then frost the layers of the cake.

Step 3: Shaping and Carving the Cake

When the cake layers are frosted, freeze the cake so that it will be easier to carve.

Spend a lot of time carving the cake so that it is in the basic shape of a human heart.

When the cake is heart shaped, crumb coat it with my blood red frosting and put it back in the freezer to chill.

Step 4: Making the Modeling Chocolate

The cake will be covered in a thin layer of modeling chocolate. To make the modeling chocolate, warm 2 lb. of white chocolate morsels in the microwave until soft. Mix in two tablespoons of cocoa powder and enough red food coloring to make it bloody.

Then, mix in 2/3-cup corn syrup and stir until it is the consistency of soft serve ice cream. Do not over stir. Wrap in saran wrap and place to the side for a couple hours until firm. When firm, knead the material until soft and pliable. You can use a hair blow dryer to speed up the kneading process.

Roll the modeling chocolate out with a rolling pin. You can use butter to keep it from sticking to the table.

Coat the frozen cake with the modeling chocolate. Use your hands to form the modeling chocolate around the form of the cake.

Use a knife to carve off excess modeling chocolate.

Step 5: Getting the Details

At this point, take out your modeling tools to sculpt the details of the heart.

We would recommend having a few anatomical pictures of the heart on hand throughout this entire process, as the heart is a rather complicated organ.

Step 6: Painting the Cake

To set up the palette, use vanilla frosting, chocolate frosting, food coloring, and water. Add food coloring to the frostings to create the right color and then water it down with water. Use brushes to paint my frosting colors onto the chocolate covered heart cake.

Pay attention to areas of fat, as well as venous and arterial vessels.