One of Switzerland’s original horror stories comes from Jeremias Gotthelf, born in 1797, who lived in the Emmental and wrote moral tales befitting his day job as a pastor.

His classic novella The Black Spider, written in 1842, was intended to put the fear of God in its readers and warn against pacts with the devil.

It succeeds.

For my long, abridged, translated, re-telling of the tale, see here.

A couple of moths ago I found a recipe from Gotthelf’s clergy house for a rich chocolate cake (recipe here) so I thought that decorating it like his most famous story was more than fitting, and perfect for Halloween.

(That was until this morning.

“Uh-oh,” said Sam, who was scrolling through his phone.

“What?”

I received a link to this Fooby Halloween cake.

Though the decorations are the same, the insides are different, and actually this decoration suits most kinds of cake. Impressive and thematic, it’s actually quite simple to make.)

The video above shows how to make the simple but effective decoration on top. Add some plastic spiders to make it especially spooky.

One Gotthelftorte, cooled

For the chocolate glaze:

80 g chocolate, chopped

150 ml whipping cream

For the web:

20 g icing sugar

1 tbsp cream

For the glaze:

Place your cake upside down on a cooling rack, with wax paper or a vessel below to catch the run-off chocolate glaze.

Put the chopped chocolate in a bowl.

In a medium pot, over medium heat, warm the cream until it is bubbling. Pour the cream over the chocolate and cover the bowl. Let sit for about five minutes.

Whisk the cream and chocolate together.

Pour over the cake and let sit for a minute to let the excess chocolate run off, but not until it sets.

For the web:

Prepare a parchment piping cone (or plastic bag).

Mix together the icing sugar and cream.

Fill the piping bag.

Pipe the white icing in a swirl on top of the cake.

Drag a toothpick, skewer, or tip of a paring knife in straight lines from the centre to the outside edge to create the pattern (see video above).

Let set.

• The Gotthelftorte has a tendency to crack on top, so when I glaze it (and would prefer a flat surface) I generally flip it over and make the bottom the top of the cake.

• Be sure to have the white icing more or less ready to go when you glaze the cake. You need to pipe the white on before the chocolate sets.

• This cake keeps extremely well in the fridge for up to five days. It gets fudgier as time goes on.

• You can use this glaze and decorations for pretty much any cake.