With the excitement of our favorite zombie holiday behind us and what appears to be a continuation of isolation and pandemic social distancing ahead of us thanks to the ‘rona, I thought a good way to help break up the monotony of these coming days would be to bake a chocolate cake…and what better way to recycle that lamb pan you hauled out for last Sunday than by using it to create a properly blasphemous Black Phillip cake?
Now for this cake, you’re going to need to budget two days. Day one is baking our cake and day two is decorating. And trust me, taking the time to freeze it overnight makes the entire process so much easier…
Because we’re all on lockdown, I decided to keep this recipe super simple. No homemade cakes made from scratch or hand-whipped Italian buttercream frosting over a double boiler flavored with virgin tears and cooled with a dodo feather fan. I’m trying to stick to ingredients and tools we all either have on hand or can easily get. So…in the words of the unflappable Ina Gartner:
Speaking of ingredients, let’s get those pulled together. For our Black Phillip lamb pan cake you will need:
- 1 box of cake mix (I used Devil’s food because let’s be honest…it felt appropriate) prepared according to the manufacturer’s directions
- 1 popsicle stick
- 4 toothpicks
- Cotton baking twine (about 2 feet)
- 3 1/4 cups mini marshmallows, divided
- 3 1/4 cups powdered sugar divided plus additional for dusting
- 2 ¼ Tablespoons lemon juice
- 1 bag black candy melts divided into 2 equal amounts
- Black food coloring (optional)
- 1 can premade chocolate fudge frosting
- 1 Tablespoon brown candy melts
- ½ cup light corn syrup
- Lamb pan
While we could make a Black Phillip cake by baking multiple layers and stacking them together and then carving them down into the right shape, that’s just so much…work…and I’m not feeling it. Instead, we’re gonna cut some corners and use a lamb cake pan like this:
These pans are a staple of baking aisles every spring and you should be able to find them for a pretty good discount right about now as the Easter season is over.
Normally these pans are used to make wholesome little cakes like this:
Yeah, that’s not what we’re gonna do. Instead, we’re going to channel our inner VVitch and use this innocent-looking pan to make a proper Black Phillip cake inspired by our favorite horned fiend:
Day One –
The first thing you’ll need to do is grease and flour both sides of your cake pan. Make sure you do NOT scrimp on this part because the last thing you want is to have your cake stick. Really give it a good going over and make sure you get ALL the nooks and crannies.
Next, take your prepared cake mix and fill just ONE HALF of your cake pan. My pans came with a hole in the back of the head to check for doneness, so I used the front half as my ‘fill’ pan. To make filling and moving easier, I put my filled pan on a baking sheet.
Now one thing about these damn lamb pan (say that three times fast) cakes is their ears are fragile and their heads are heavy. To help alleviate future decapitations, we’re gonna add a little internal structure before baking. Gently press your popsicle stick into the pan approximately where the spine would be, making sure it extends well up into the head without being too close to the top.
Give the ears a bit of structure as well by placing your toothpicks into the center of them.
Put your second pan on top of your first and use your twine to really tie the two together tightly. YOU HAVE TO DO THIS. If you don’t tie your pans together, the cake batter will expand, lift off the top pan, ooze out the sides, and you’ll end up with a pile of chocolaty sheep shit instead of a lamb cake. Trust me…
Okay..now it’s time to bake our cake! Pop it into your oven and bake according to your manufacturer’s directions. I found mine was done after about 35 minutes.
*side note, because we’re filling only half our pan, you should have a fair amount of batter left over. I took the excess, greased two ramakins, and made two tiny cakes to munch on. Delicious!
Once your cake is fully baked you will want to let him cool before removing him from the pan.
Once he’s cool, use a knife to trim off any flashing and flatten the bottom.
Use a swipe of frosting to stick him to a good platter.
Wrap him up snugly in some saran wrap and then pop him into the freezer overnight.
And that’s it for day one. Easy, right? Why not reward yourself for all that hard work by eating that mini cake you made with your excess cake batter!
Day Two –
Onto day two of our Black Phillip lamb pan cake! Pull him out of the freezer and give him a generous coating of your chocolate fudge frosting.
Once you have that coating on there, pop him back into the freezer and let’s move onto making the marshmallow dough we’ll be using to cover him in.
In a microwave-safe bowl, combine 2 cups of your mini-marshmallows with 2 tablespoons of lemon juice and ½ of your black candy melts and microwave for 30-second intervals until all the marshmallows and candy melts are liquid-smooth and easily stirred together.
On a smooth surface mound up 2 cups of your powdered sugar and create a small well in the center. Pour your liquid marshmallow/candy melt mix into this well and start kneading the powdered sugar into the mixture. It will start out very sticky and gooey, but as you knead you should end up with a fairly smooth dough (add in additional powdered sugar as needed to keep it from sticking).
Pull off a small ball of your black marshmallow dough and stick it to the front of Phillip’s face. While the lamb pan is cute, goats have a longer snoot and we’ll be using a bit of this marshmallow dough to add some length.
Pull off another small ball of black marshmallow dough (about the size of a gumball) and set aside for now. We’ll be using it later to make Phillip’s horns.
Roll out the rest of your marshmallow dough and carefully us it to cover Phillip fully. Because we’ll be adding a wooly goat-coat on top of this marshmallow dough layer, don’t stress if your coverage isn’t perfect.
Once he’s covered, use your fingers to gently mold his head into a more goat-ish shape. Press in a small indentation for each of his eyes and flat spots at the top of his head for his horns.
Pop him back into the freezer and let’s make our chocolate dough for his fur.
In a microwave bowl, zap your remaining black candy melts and 1 cup of your marshmallows until fully melted and you can stir them together into a smooth mixture. While you’re doing this, add in some additional black food coloring to ensure you’ve got an absolutely dark as sin mix (about a teaspoon or so is MORE than enough). We’re basically doing what we did before for our marshmallow dough, but substituting black food coloring for lemon juice.
Once the marshmallows and candy melts are liquid, add in your ¼ cup light corn syrup and start mixing. As you mix it will go from liquid to a rough crumbly mixture. Pull this mixture out and start kneading it. You’ll end up with a brittle feeling dough that shreds if you pull it apart. This will be our fur for Phillip.
Pull Phillip out of the fridge and let’s start putting some fur on him. Starting at the bottom, pull a shred of chocolate dough and press it against the marshmallow dough we covered him with earlier. It should stick fairly easily.
Continue working your way around the bottom of him and then move your way up, applying his fur in rough chunks with the top layer covering the part of the bottom layer where you pressed it against the marshmallow dough (this helps hide any weird flat parts.) Make sure to work fairly quickly as this chocolate dough will harden as it cools.
If your chocolate dough gets too hard, pop it back in the microwave for about 15 seconds but don’t overheat as it can burn very easily.
Once you get to Phillip’s face, make sure to keep the area where his horns will attach bare as well as his eyes and the end of his nose.
Don’t forget to give him a nice full beard by allowing a few shreds of dough to hang off the bottom of his chin. You can also use this time to help lengthen his ears and give them some more goat-like characteristics and shag.
Use the tip of a knife to give him a nice looking goat nose and mouth.
To make his eyes and his horns, we’ll be making one more tiny batch of marshmallow dough. In your microwave-safe bowl, zap your remaining marshmallows and ¼ tablespoon lemon juice. Mix with the last ¼ cup of your powdered sugar and knead together. Once it’s well kneaded, pull off two small chunks and roll into equal balls. These are Phillip’s eyes. Set them aside to firm up a bit before trying to place them…this will make it easier to put them into his head without smooshing them.
The rest of the dough will be used for your horns but first, we have to turn it brown. Zap your brown candy melt and fold the liquid candy into your remaining white marshmallow dough a little at a time until you have a tan dough. To make the marbled look for Phillip’s horns, mix your tan ball of marshmallow dough with the gumball sized wad of black marshmallow dough that we saved from earlier. Twist the two colors together and roll to combine. Once you’re happy with the look, divide the dough in half and roll out two long cones with sharp, tapered ends.
To get the proper curve, I set my horns down over the end of my rolling pin for about 30 minutes and then popped them into the freezer for another 30 minutes.
I also added a bit of texture by pinching them along their length on one side to give them some subtle ridging.
While your horns are freezing, carefully pop Phillip’s eyes into place and secure them. You can do this using a dab or two of corn syrup. Help blend them into his features by adding a few more shreds of black chocolate dough around the edges.
To add some hair-lines to his fur, you can gently scrape the chocolate dough with the tip of a toothpick.
To attach his horns, use a drop of light corn syrup in the dents on his head and a toothpick in each spot to help secure them to his head.
And that’s it! You’re done!
Step back and pay proper respect to our edible dark lord and laugh about the fact that we’ve totally subverted the original intention of our lamb pan.
Then, grab a glass of milk, a sharp knife, and dig in.
Just remember, if you can’t eat it all and you decide to keep it for later, it does well in the fridge…unless you’re like me and forget that the bulb in there has burned out and this is what you end up seeing first thing in the morning…
Ahahahah.
Bone appetite!
For more movie-inspired treats why not check out our Beetlejuice inspired shrimp arm sushi?
