Haunted Mansion Wedding Cake | A Bloody Good Recipe

For the Happy Haunts who materialize here on a regular basis, you’ll notice that we spend most of our time talking about Walt Disney World. Every once in a while though, something catches our eye from Disneyland and since we don’t have the chance to try those fun treats very often. . . . well. . . . we have to improvise! That’s why today, we’re taking a whack at a sweet treat from over at Disneyland; the Haunted Mansion Wedding Cake.

This wedding cake first popped up at Disneyland for the 50th anniversary of the Haunted Mansion attraction and then returned not too long ago when the park reopened. The cake, which is served to guests by the slice, is fairly nondescript. . . . aside from all the blood!

This is a photograph claimed to be of a ghost taken in 1936 by Captain Hubert C. Provand. This image is said to have the inspiration for the original “Beating Heart Bride” in the Haunted Mansion.

Before we go any further, I suppose we should take a second to answer a question some of you night have about this cake: why a wedding cake and what’s the deal with all that blood? Well curious mortals, that answer requires a little lesson in Haunted Mansion history.

If you’ve ever had the opportunity to ride the Haunted Mansion before, you may recall visiting the attic of the mansion during your tour. The attic is home to many of the spirits in the mansion, one of which being a ghostly bride with glowing eyes and a beating heart. Known as the Beating Heart Bride and inspired by what is considered to be one of the most famous ghost photographs of all time, the bride was the centerpiece of the attic. . . and quite chilling. However, like many things at Walt Disney World, the attic got an update in 2006 and so too did the bride.

Now known as Constance Hatchaway, the bride haunts the attic in which you can see ghostly evidence of her past deeds; mainly marrying men for their wealth before decapitating them with a hatchet. Somehow she is never caught due to lack of evidence, but she earns the title of The Black Widow Bride.

Spooky. . . . but also where the bloody wedding cake comes from.

🦇

Getting back to the cake. . . . .

We don’t know exactly what the Haunted Mansion Wedding Cake tastes like, because we haven’t had the opportunity to try it for ourselves. However, thanks to many different accounts that have been posted online, we’ve got a pretty good idea how to pull together something fairly similar.

The cake is reported to be a very moist white cake with whipped cream cheese frosting between the layers along with cherry sauce and butter cream icing. The cherry sauce also includes chunks of cherry as well as some puree; similar to what you’d find in pie or pastry filling. Thanks to some pictures that have been floating around the internet, we see that some of the cherry filling seems to have bleed through the layers and some of the cherry sauce is splattered on top.

Overall, the Haunted Mansion Wedding Cake is a relatively straightforward treat to pull together while also getting close to the original. . . . so let’s go for it!

The way I see it, as with most of the other items we make here on 2 Foolish Mortals, there are 2 ways to go about making the Haunted Mansion Wedding Cake. The first is to make everything from scratch. This is a great fan for the Happy Haunts out there who are fans of baking and have the time to devote to recreating this cake. The second option is to make the recipe using premade ingredients. This is an option that is ideal for someone who doesn’t have the time, knowledge or [let’s face it. . . we’ve all been there] energy to do it any other way. I’ve decided to go with the second option today. Rather than making each and every item from scratch, we’re reading for some premade items and pulling them together into something that will without a doubt be frightfully delicious! As always, you’re more than welcome to make any or all of the items from scratch if you’d like. In that case, I hope this will serve as a guide.

Ingredients:

🪓 White Cake Mix - What we’re using today is a box of Betty Crocker Super Moist White Cake Mix. Whatever you choose, or if you choose to make your own from scratch, keep in mind that the color of the cake is important here. We want the blood to stand out in the most striking way possible.

🪓 Whipped Cream Cheese Frosting - As was mentioned in most every account of the Haunted Mansion Wedding Cake that I read, between each layer is cream cheese frosting. Pictures of the cake also tell us that the cream cheese frosting is light and airy, or whipped. For this, I’ve chosen to go with Betty Crocker Whipped Cream Cheese Frosting.

🪓 Cherry Pie Filling - For the cherries, I’ve decided to get a can of Market Pantry Cherry Pie Filling. These cherries in syrup, will not only do the job for the filling, but will also be used to splatter the top of the cake.

🪓 Butter Cream Frosting - For the outer layer of the cake, I’ve decided to get Betty Crocker Whipped Butter Cream Frosting. In the photo of the cake, the icing on the cake looks more rich than whipped, but as there were many complaints about the amount of icing on the cake, I decided to change things up. Opting for a whipped icing should make things lighter and more enjoyable, especially if you’re not too into the sweet topping.

🪓 Butter

🪓 Milk

🪓 Eggs

🪓 Nonstick Cooking Spray or Vegetable Shortening

Bake The Cake

First thing’s first, we’ve got to bake the cake. I’ll start this process off by preheating my oven to the recommended temperature. I’ll also use this opportunity before I really get started to grease my baking pan, with nonstick cooking spray or vegetable shortening, making sure that I get a good coating in all the edges. [NOTE: Instructions on some cake mixes will only recommend greasing the bottom of the pan. Personally, I always grease the entire interior of the pan.]

With that out of the way, it’s time to start putting the batter together. Since I’ve decided to go with cake mix, I’m going to be following the instructions on the box. . . . . at least for the most part. There are 2 ingredients that I’ll be substituting out; water and vegetable oil. We’re going to be using milk and butter instead, using the same amount of milk as water and butter as vegetable oil. I’ll also be sure to use egg whites rather than whole eggs to ensure that we keep the color of the cake as white as possible.

After combining all of the ingredients and mixing them together, it’s into the greased cake pan! You can choose to put this into any size or shape cake pan. As I often say when it comes to recreating these recipes, “you do you”. I’ve chosen to go with a round cake pan so that it closely resembles the original Haunted Mansion Wedding Cake. With everything ready to go, pop that bad boy in the oven and set a time. Once the cake looks done, be sure to check by sticking a skewer or butter knife in the center. If it pulls out clean, the cake is done, If not, put the cake back in for a few minutes at a time. Check regularly.

Once the cake is done, pull it out of the oven and allow it to cool.

Prepare The Cherries

While the cake is baking, it’s time to prepare the cherries. Once again, you can choose to use homemade cherry pie filling or you can opt for something store bought. Today, I’m using a store bought canned cherry pie filling.

As I mentioned earlier, the cherry filling in the layers of this cake seems to have a combination of cherry chunks as well as puree. To accomplish this, we’re going to blend some of the cherry pie filling along with a very small amount of water.

How much cherry pie filling you’ll want to blend depends on how large a cake you’re intending to make. Ultimately, we’ll be using this blended cherry pie mixture to lightly coat each layer of the cake. The larger the cake you’re making, the more filling you’ll want to blend. Today, to cover my round 9-inch cake I blended about 1/2 cup of cherry pie filling with about 1 tablespoon of water and it was more than enough to cover 3 round 9-inch cakes. Set the blended cherries aside for later.

Next we’re going to work on the remaining cherry pie filling. I’m going to consider this an optional step, because I know that there are some of you out there who will want to go ahead and do it and others who won’t bother. For the record, I didn’t bother. . . . If you’re not a huge fan of whole cherries in the filling of your cake, this would be the time to do something about the remaining cherry pie filling. You can choose to chop some of the cherries down into smaller pieces or you can separate them from the thick sauce. [Don’t discard the sauce, we’re going to need that later.] This is one of those areas where you should do what you think will be best for you and your family. Personally, I’m going to keep the whole cherries in there!

[NOTE: The cherries we’re using here today don’t quite have the same deep dark red color of blood. If this is what you’re hoping to achieve, using food coloring to create just the right shade is a good option. In that case, we recommend coloring the cherries themselves as well as the puree.]

Cut The Top Off The Cake

Once the cake is out of the oven and cool, it’s time to channel your inner Constance Hatchaway and decapitate your cake! Using a large serrated knife, cut the rounded top off your cake. This will make it easier to stack the layers of your cake.

Speaking of layers, since the Haunted Mansion Wedding Cake is layered, this is the time to cut your cake down to size if necessary. This is something that you’ll want to do if you’ve baked a very thick cake. Again, you can do this with a serrated knife.

[NOTE: The original Haunted Mansion Wedding Cake has 3 layers, but you can do whatever works best for you here. Today, I’ll be making my wedding cake with 3 layers. As always, do what works best for you and your purpose.]

Add A Layer Of Cherries

From the pictures we’ve seen, the cherry filling seeps into the layers of cake. To achieve this, we’re going to start off by taking a few random chunks out of the cake with a fork. You can also choose to poke homes in the cake if that works better for you. You can make as many, or as few, holes as you’d like. Remember, the more holes and chunks taken out of the cake, the more red seeps through.

Once you’ve taken out all of your chunks and poked your holes, take some time to clear any large crumbs off the surface of the cake. Then, it’s time to reach for that cherry puree that we made earlier.

Using the cherry puree, cover the entire surface of the cake. Be sure to fill in all of the holes that you’ve made and keep about 1/2 inch away from the edge. Then, if you’ve decided that you’d like some whole or sliced cherries, add those on next. Since I’ve decided to use whole cherries, I’ve decided to place them in some of the larger holes that I’d made. I’ve also gone ahead and pushed some directly into the cake.

[NOTE: If you’re looking for a much more dramatic effect, you can use a pastry syringe to inject the cherry puree directly into the cake.]

Once you’ve got a good layer of cherry puree and cherries, it’s time to chill the cake. Chilling the cake is something that you could probably file under optional, but it will make your like a lot easier. Reason being, it will firm everything up a bit so that you can more easily pull things together. . . especially on warm summer days. I popped the cake in the fridge for about an hour, uncovered, before taking it out again and starting the next step.

Stack The Layers

When the cake is chilled, or whenever you’re ready, it’s time to start assembling the laters. The Haunted Mansion Wedding Cake has whipped cream cheese filling between the layers along with the cherry puree, so we’re going to add that in here before stacking. We’ll start by making a border around the rim of the cake.

To make the border around the edge of the cake, fill a piping bag [or a plastic ziplock baggy] with butter cream icing. You can use a piping tip if you so choose, but since this will be hidden under layers of cake and icing you can also simply cut off the corner of your bag. Then, along the rim of the cake on the 1/2 that we left when putting on the cherry puree, make a border. This will help keep the whipped cream cheese icing in place.

Next, we’re going to put out layer of whipped cream cheese icing. This can be a little tricky, with the cherry puree already in place, but you’ll get the hang of it rather quickly. Place a few dollops of whipped cream cheese icing around each layer of cake and carefully spread it out. Another option is to fill a piping bag with whipped cream cheese frosting [much like we did to create the border along the rim] and pipe it on. Make sure to cover the entire surface of the cake. Repeat this for the bottom and middle later, but do not put cream cheese frosting on the top layer.

With the cream cheese in place, it’s time to start stacking!

Start by stacking the center layer on top of the bottom layer. Once it’s centered, you can give it a little wiggle to make sure it’s secure before moving on. Next, place the top layers [which has cherry puree on the top, not cream cheese icing] on the top. Again, give the top layer a little wiggle and make sure that it’s secure and that all the layers are straight.

At this point, if your kitchen is very warm, you may want to put the entire cake back into the fridge again. Doing this will stiffen the icing that was used to put the layers together and prevent the cake from drooping. However, if you don’t have the ability to put an entire cake into your fridge, you don’t really have to. Like I said earlier about chilling the cake, this can be classified under optional.

If you do decide to put your cake in the fridge, consider leaving it in there for at least 30 minutes. Longer will be fine too, so there’s no need for a timer or to rush back to this project in this case.

Frost The Cake

Next up, we’re frosting the cake. This step is fairly straightforward, so we won’t be going too into the weeds. here. With the butter cream icing, frost the entire outside and top of the cake. If your cake has a lot of crumbs, start with a very think later [often referred to as a crumb coat] and set the cake back into the fridge for a few minutes to cool before putting on the final layer of icing.

There are a few different ways you can choose to put the frosting on the outside of the cake. Today, I’m using the back of a spoon [like I said, we’re keeping this super simple for those who don’t have a lot of cake decorating tools] and a large offset spatula. You can, of course, use the piping bag method to put the icing on and then smooth it with a spatula if you’d like. It’s really up to you and whatever tools you have at your disposal.

Once there is a good layer of icing on both the top and sides of the cake, do your best to smooth the icing out as much as possible. This can take a little bit of time and might be challenging, but I’ve got a tip you should try! Try wetting down whatever you’re using to smooth the icing first. In my case, I ran the offset spatula under some water, gave it a little shake to get off excess dripps and then smoothed the cake with it. This will allow the spatula, spoon or whatever to slide more easily over the icing and create a smoother surface. Continue to wet down your spatula or spoon between each stroke up against the icing.

Repeat this until the icing is relatively smooth. If you can’t get it perfect, that’s alright! We’ll be decorating the cake so we can hide any imperfections later. Plus, this cake is so delicious that I can almost guarantee no one is going to notice. . . . they’ll be too busy eating!

Decorate

We’re arriving at some of the final steps here and one that I’m sure some of you might be dreading. . . . . . decorating. Whenever I talk to people about making cakes, the decoration is always where their confidence in the process starts to slip away. However, it’s not as scary are you’re likely making it out to be. You got this!

The decoration on the Haunted Mansion Wedding Cake is simple, yet effective. What we’re really trying to do here is give the cake a little bit of decoration and depth. You can go wild here, if you’d like to, but you can also keep things very basic. Like everything else we’re doing today, the decoration is going to be basic enough for anyone to achieve!

To decorate the cake, we’re going to be using a piping bag and large star piping tip. If you have these tools at your disposal, or are planning to purchase them for this project, you can go ahead and do that. Load the tip into the bag, fill it with your butter cream icing and you’re good to go! If you’re not planning to purchase multiple cake decorating supplies, you have a few good options available to you. In fact, I’m using one of them today!

Rather than dealing with the hassle and clean up, I’ve decided to purchase an already filled piping bag of icing from my local Target. This product is by Pillsbury and is called “Filled Pastry Bag” in the flavor vanilla. With a price tag of under $3.00, this is a great option for those of you who are wanting to pull this together without having to hunt or pay for supplies.

With our piping bag all ready to go, we’re going to make a few decorations on the cake. I’ve chosen to do something similar to what the original had. This includes a rosette on the top of the cake, shells along the border and I did a few rosettes on the side of the cake. [NOTE: In the original, the cake seems to have ribbons which were created with a large leaf tip.] As always, you can change things up to however you see fit going as technical and detailed or as simple as you’d like. Just remember, this is your opportunity to hide some of those imperfections we talked about in the last step. A quick swirl or star pattern will do wonders!

[NOTE: If you’re wanting a it more detail on your cake, but lack the skills to achieve it, I recommend purchasing some premade icing roses from your local hobby or craft shop. You can get a pack of rises, or in some cases other items as well, for around $5.00, which can be an easy way to add some impressive decoration to your cake.]

The next step is to add the splatter.

Today, I’m choosing to use some of the cherry sauce to splatter on the cake. This seemed like the easiest option and one that wouldn’t require additional purchases for those of you wanting to recreate this recipe on a budget. However, if I were going for something a bit more realistic, I’d do things a little bit differently. [NOTE: Using corn syrup and a combination of food coloring, you can create edible blood that looks very realistic. This will contribute to the sweetness of the cake and is something that is more visual than it is contributing to the taste of the cake. Take that into consideration if you’d like to go that route. For the casual baker, wanting to keep things simple, the cherry sauce works fine though.]

Using a chopstick and a knife, I splattered cherry sauce all over the cake. **WARNING** This part of the process is unreasonably messy! I tried a few different methods that I anticipated would reduce the splatter zone, but most of them were ineffective and I ended up having to do quite a bit of cleanup afterwards. However, we ended up with the effect we were looking for!

Plate & Garnish

Once you’re happy with the amount of splatter you’ve put on the cake, you’re finally at the point where you can cut a slice! The slices being served up at Disneyland are rather large according to all accounts, so we’ve cut a massive slice and plopped it carefully onto a plate. Then, we’ve garnished with a little more of that cherry sauce which we’ve allowed to run down the side of the cake. Of course, you don’t have to cut in right away. If you choose to sae the cake for later, it’s probably best to pop it back into the fridge so that the icing stays stiff and allows the cake to hold its shape until you’re ready to cut.

There is a lot to like about this cake. The cherry and whipped cream cheese icing combine to make what isn’t far off of a New York Style Cheesecake flavor, which we really love. We’ve also stayed away from any of the super sweet ingredients that could be used to make a more dramatic effect [such as using jello to color the cake or corn syrup for the blood] to keep the cake with just the right amount of sweetness.

The cake is also surprisingly light for the the size and amount of frosting used, which in our opinion is an improvement compared to some of the opinions of the original. This is something that we achieved using super moist cake and whipped icing. Though there is a lot being used, it’s not as heavy or sweet as some of the other alternatives. This makes it easy to take down an entire piece without feeling too gross afterwards.

Though the cake is meant to be something a bit more spooky, we both enjoyed it so much that it’s likely to hit our table again. . . whether or not it’s made to look like the Haunted Mansion Wedding Cake. Of course, we’d love to know what you thought of the cake if you made it for yourself or if you had the chance to try it at Disneyland. Let us know all about it by joining the Jamboree! There you can share your thoughts, tips, tricks and pics of your very own Haunted Mansion Wedding Cake.

See you there!