Recipe
Chocolate Graveyard Traybake
A chocolate traybake with cocoa sponge, chocolate buttercream and crunchy biscuit soil, finished with playful headstones and mini chocolate eggs for a Halloween-style afternoon-tea bake.
Ingredients
Method
30 mins prep25 mins cook55 mins total
Heat the oven to 180°C, or 160°C fan, and line a 20cm x 30cm traybake tin with baking paper.
Whisk the softened butter and caster sugar until pale. Beat in the eggs one at a time, then mix in the milk and vanilla extract.
Sift in the plain flour, cocoa powder, baking powder and salt, then fold just until no dry patches remain. Spread the batter evenly in the tin.
Bake for 22–25 minutes, until the centre is set and a skewer comes out with a few moist crumbs. Cool completely in the tin.
Beat 100g softened butter with the icing sugar and melted dark chocolate until smooth and spreadable, then cover the cooled cake.
Scatter the crushed digestive biscuits over the icing. Arrange the mini chocolate eggs and biscuit headstones across the surface, then cut into squares to serve.
Notes
Let the cake cool fully before adding the buttercream; a warm sponge will soften the icing and pull crumbs into the surface. Crush the biscuits to a coarse soil rather than a fine powder so the topping keeps some texture.
About this recipe
This chocolate graveyard traybake turns a straightforward sponge into a playful centrepiece, with a dark cocoa crumb, rich chocolate buttercream and a rough layer of crushed digestive biscuits for soil. Mini chocolate eggs add a small, sweet finish among the biscuit headstones.
The cake is baked as one slab, cooled completely and then decorated in layers, so the crumb stays neat beneath the topping. Spread the buttercream generously rather than smoothing it too flat: the uneven surface gives the biscuit decorations somewhere to sit and makes the graveyard effect feel deliberate.
