Great Pit of Carkoon Bundt Cake

Brain cupcakes. Chocolate eyeballs. Worms in dirt. These are the types of desserts I look forward to eating every Halloween. For this year’s festivities, I wanted to create a treat that puts a Star Wars twist on those traditional spooky desserts. In my opinion, nothing says scary like The Great Pit of Carkoon and the deadly Sarlacc that inhabits it. Being digested over the course of a thousand years is what nightmares are made of!

Thankfully, we don’t have to be eaten by that creature in the desert. Instead, we can eat the creature in a dessert! This Great Pit of Carkoon Bundt Cake (and edible Sarlacc) is perfect for Halloween parties, birthday parties, or anytime you want to eat that memorable monster from Return of the Jedi.

For this recipe I used store-bought frosting and cake mix from a box. Martha Stewart I am not. However, if you’re an experienced baker, you can play around with the flavors and make the frosting and cake from scratch. Even though there are several steps, this dessert is really easy to make! In fact, I made a how-to video if you’d like to see the whole cake-making process! I’ve also listed all the steps below. Happy baking and may the Fork be with you this Halloween!

What You’ll Need:

• Bundt cake pan

• Cake mix

• Ginger snap cookies

• Frosting

• Slivered almonds

• Gummy worms

• Toothpicks

• Semi-sweet chocolate chips

• Strawberries

• Food coloring

• Spatula

Prepare your cake mix and pour it into the bundt pan. I chose to make a lemon cake but you can choose whatever flavor you like. Bake it as directed on the box (or from your recipe) and then let it cool for 10 minutes. Then place a plate over the top of the pan and flip it over.

Now to create Tatooine sand! Take 20-25 ginger snap cookies and place them in a blender. Blend until they’re finely ground and pour them into a bowl. You should now have about 2 ½ cups of cookie sand.

Set the sand aside and now apply a thin layer of frosting around the cake. Applying the frosting will help your cookie sand stick to the surface. I chose buttercream frosting since I thought the flavor would pair well with the lemon and ginger snap flavors.

Once the entire cake is frosted, spoon the cookie sand onto the cake. Pat it down to create a smooth texture. Now you have a Tatooine desert dessert!

To create the mouth of the Sarlacc, put a half cup of frosting into a small bowl. Add food coloring to make a pinkish tan color. Then apply the frosting to the inside of the pit covering the edges and the bottom of the plate.

The Sarlacc has rows of razor-sharp teeth, ready to devour it’s prey. Recreate this terrifying feature by inserting slivered almonds into the pit of the cake.

The Sarlacc also has a beak-like tongue. A chocolate-covered strawberry is a tasty way to replicate this Sarlacc organ. To make the beaked tongue, place a half cup of chocolate chips in the microwave for two minutes. Then mix the warm chips together. Dip a strawberry into the chocolate and place it on a plate covered in wax paper (or foil).

For the Sarlacc’s tentacles, skewer a gummy worm with a toothpick, then dip it into the warm chocolate. Since the cake pit is somewhat small, I recommend making four to five tentacles. Place the chocolate worms and strawberries in the refrigerator for 15-30 minutes.

Once the chocolate has hardened slightly, cut open the beaked tongue with a knife. The chocolate should still be soft enough to cut without cracking the rest of the shell.

Once the beak is ready to go, drop it in the pit!

As a finishing touch, apply Tatooine cookie sand to the outer rim of the plate.

Now you have a delicious dessert worthy of dwelling in the pit…of your stomach.  :)

Jennifer Landa is a Los Angeles-based actress, writer, and video blogger. One of her proudest moments was helping to design the Death Star...into a skirt. To learn more about Jennifer, visit jenilanda.com.