Halloween Dark Chocolate Cake with Orange Buttercream is wild with scattered twigs and pumpkin candies. It was a dark night and the wind was brisk, scattering twigs and branches everywhere in the pumpkin patch! This cake was actually inspired by a recent fall wind storm where I live. Wind gusts up to 30mph caused tree branches to fall everywhere. My Halloween cake is a recreation of the chaos and destruction of those winds. On a tasty note, this is a dense dark chocolate butter cake made with unsweetened cocoa, buttermilk, and sour cream. The chocolate cake recipe is adapted from a recipe by Ina Garten of the Food Network; the only change I made to the recipe was to eliminate 3 tablespoons of brewed coffee. I decided to frost the cake with Swiss Meringue Orange Buttercream since chocolate and orange flavors are always a good pairing. I’m not a fan of using food coloring in food but I thought for Halloween a bit of color would be fun, so I added orange food coloring to the buttercream frosting.