Growing up, Coraline was one of my all-time favorite films. Not only does this film include a beautiful soundtrack, but it also has a talking cat among many other fantastical and whimsical elements that I fell in love with immediately.
Coraline follows a girl named, well, Coraline. She’s a young girl with a heart for adventure. While snooping around her new home, she discovers a hidden door that leads to a house that parallels her own. There she finds another set of parents and a life better than her old boring one. She relishes in her new life until she discovers that they are trying to keep her there forever.
One of the most pivotal scenes from the film is the dinner scene. The other mother, as she is called, makes a feast for Coraline that showcases delicious food such as corn on the cob, rolls, golden chicken breast, and includes a gravy train that moves around the table. It’s kind of like a more extravagant Thanksgiving dinner if you ask me.
While I couldn’t attempt to recreate all of the food from the scene, I decided to recreate the cake presented at the end of dinner. This cake is a double-layered chocolate cake that reads “Welcome Home” in red frosting on the top. This is the scene where the other mother asks Coraline to stay and not return home, marking a huge turning point in the film.
I decided to recreate this piece specifically because of its hidden meaning and importance to the film. When looking at the cake, you see there is one loop in the “o” in “welcome”, but there are two loops in the “o” in home. When I was younger, I had no idea this had any significance, however, upon further research, it seems I was wrong.
According to Graphology, a double loop on a lower-case “o” means that the person who wrote it is lying. There is only one double loop, meaning she is welcome but she is not home. When I read this, I got chills. Watching this movie again as an adult scared me more than it did as a kid. I found myself chewing my nails begging Coraline not to go into certain rooms or follow certain things not because I knew what was already going to happen, but because all the signs of manipulation and unwelcomeness were more apparent to me.
However, the cake wasn’t the only hidden gem in this film. After the cake is presented to Coraline, lightning strikes. This in and of itself isn’t strange or out of the ordinary, what is strange is the shape of the lightning. It forms a skeletal like hand, alluding to the end of the film where the other mother transforms into a skeletal beast and attempts to force Coraline to stay with her forever.
This whole scene in general was a huge part of the film and has stuck with me for all of these years. It’s almost like you don’t recognize the signs until later and by then it’s too late, much like how Coraline didn’t understand the danger she was in until it was almost too late for her to fix it. Although, she ultimately did through a very close call and that is one of the many reasons Coraline is such a powerful and memorable film to this day.
Now, baking and decorating a cake is no easy task, I can assure you. I thought this would take me at most 4 hours, but I found myself not finishing it until the next day. So, in all honesty, I have no idea how long I worked on this cake.
I have made cakes before, but I have never decorated any to be a replica of a Claymation cake and this is where I get into trouble.
I see why people go to school for this; baking this cake included not only making the cake from scratch but using food coloring to dye icing the correct color as well as using piping bags to pipe designs on the cake, which I had never done before.
But we all start somewhere and if you’re trying to recreate this cake and want to skip over the story, it's right here!
First things first you’re going to want to grab all the necessary kitchen supplies. This includes:
- Two (2) 9 inch round cake tins
- A large mixing bowl
- A whisk
- A baking spatula
- Measuring cups and spoons
- A few piping bags with piping tips of your choice
Now it’s time for ingredients! I follow this wonderful cake recipe by Add a Pinch
Ingredients:
- 2 cups all-purpose flour
- 2 cups sugar
- 3/4 cup unsweetened cocoa powder
- 2 teaspoons baking powder
- 1 1/2 teaspoons baking soda
- 1 teaspoon salt
- 1 teaspoon espresso powder homemade or store-bought (This isn’t necessary but it definitely adds to the flavor)
- 1 cup milk buttermilk, almond, or coconut milk (I used oat milk)
- 1/2 cup vegetable oil canola oil, or melted coconut oil
- 2 large eggs
- 2 teaspoons vanilla extract
- 1 cup boiling water (boiling is very important! It helps your cake stay a moist texture)
Steps:
1) Preheat oven to 350 degrees and spray or flour the two cake pans
2) Add flour, sugar, cocoa, baking powder, baking soda, salt and espresso powder to a large bowl or the bowl of a stand mixer. Whisk through to combine
3) Add milk, vegetable oil, eggs, and vanilla to flour mixture and mix until well combined. Then, carefully add boiling water bit by bit to the cake batter until well combined.
4) Distribute cake batter evenly between the two prepared cake pans. Bake for 30-35 minutes, until a toothpick or cake tester inserted in the center of the chocolate cake comes out clean.
5) Remove from the oven and allow to cool for about 10 minutes, remove from the pan and cool completely.
While the cake is in the oven, you might want to go ahead and dye the frosting. Now, you can make your own homemade buttercream frosting but since I don’t have a stand mixer or even a hand mixer I decided against that.
So I took two store-bought tins of vanilla frosting and started dying them my desired color. I took about 2/3 of a cup of the frosting out of one of the tins and set that aside to dye yellow. The rest of the frosting I dyed a baby pink color.
It is important to note that red food dye goes a LONG way. Add less than you thing you need and keep adding dye until you get the desired color! A good tip is that you can always add more, but you can’t take it back out.
Once the frosting is made you can go about assembling the cake!
The base is just a double layer chocolate cake with pink frosting as a base. I feel like fondant would be best to get the based super smooth, but I don’t have access to fondant in the slightest so I used frosting (also frosting tastes better, just saying).
This cake is fairly simple in terms of design, but if you can’t gauge space or have a steady hand like me you might not want to go into the cake decorating business. You’re going to fill one piping bag with the yellow frosting and the other with the red. With the yellow, you are going to create ten flower shapes in a circle around the top and with the red, you’re going to write “welcome home” in the middle. Remember to include your single and double loop!
This recipe is perfect for a Halloween or Coraline themed party! But I wouldn’t judge you for just wanting to try it out on a rainy day!
Be sure to tag me on Instagram (@2d.treats) and Twitter (@2dTreats) if you decide to recreate this recipe! Good luck!
Comments