An easy chocolate cake can be turned into something special with just a little bit of creative icing. Look for plastic bugs and spider to decorate the cake at $2 shops or similar.

Ingredients

• 100 grams butter, softened
• 1¼ cups caster sugar
• 2 eggs, lightly beaten
• 1½ cups flour
• ½ cup cocoa, sifted
• ¼ tsp baking powder
• 1 tsp baking soda
• ¾ cup water or milk

To Decorate

• ½ quantity Basic Icing recipe, chocolate
• 4-5 small plastic spiders or bugs

Method

1. Beat the butter and sugar until light and creamy. Beat in the eggs one at a time.
2. Sift the flour, cocoa, baking powder, baking soda and fold into the creamed mixture alternatively with the cocoa and water or milk.
3. Transfer the mixture to a greased and paper lined 20cm cake tin.
4. Bake at 180 degrees Celsius for 50 minutes to 1 hour or until a skewer comes out clean. Stand in the tin for 10 minutes before transferring to a cake rack to cool.
5. When the cake is cool, trim the top so that the cake sits flat when inverted on a cake board. Ice and decorate so the cake looks like a spider or any other Halloween decoration you like.