Holy Ghost Soul Cakes For All Souls’ Day

As a Catholic, I love including fun snacks and recipes that keep my kids focuses on the current feast day! Why not remember the true meaning of All Souls’ Day with these super fun “Holy Ghost” soul cakes? You can find tons of resources for celebrating All Saints’/All Souls’ day with kids here. Now let me show you my recipe for Holy Ghost Soul Cakes! 

Traditional Soul Cakes For All Souls’ Day

This is a tradition that dates back to medieval times in England. Groups of kids called “soulers” would go door to door begging for cakes. In exchange, they promised to pray for the souls of your deceased family to be released from purgatory. This tradition spread to other countries such as Portugal and the Philippines. You can read more about the origins of soul cakes here. 

Does this sound famliar? Because it’s the origin of Trick-or-Treating. 🙂

Soul cakes were traditionally small round cakes, or sometimes in a ring shape like a doughnut. Sometimes they had a cross on the top made out of raisins. They come with a fun little song!

The Soul Cake Song

Soul, soul a soul cake!
Please good Missis, a soul-cake!
An apple, a pear, a plum, or a cherry,
Any good thing to make us all merry.
One for Peter, two for Paul
Three for Him who made us all.

Holy Ghost Soul Cupcakes Recipe

These Holy Ghost cupcakes are not your traditional “soul cakes”, which seem actually more like cookies, but we enjoy them just the same! These cupcakes have meringue ghost toppers, and kids absolutely love them! Here’s the recipe:

Makes 24 cupcakes

Prep time: 15 minutes

Bake time: 2 hours 15 minutes

Ingredients:

• 1 box of white cake mix (plus whatever is needed to put in the cake mix)
• 1 can of white icing (You can make your own or just purchase it ready to go. I’m always about the easy option!)
• 4 egg whites, room temperature
• ½ teaspoon cream of tartar
• 1 cup sugar
• 2 teaspoons vanilla extract
• Chocolate chips
• Mini chocolate chips 

Instructions:

Prepare the cake mix as cupcakes as according to package instructions. Allow to cool completely.

Top the cupcakes with a thin layer of your white icing and set aside.

Preheat your oven to 225 degrees. Prepare a baking sheet by lining it with parchment paper.

In a large bowl, beat the egg whites on high with hand mixer or stand mixer with the whisk attachment until they become frothy.

Add cream of tartar and beat on medium speed until soft peaks begin to form.

Turn the mixer to high and begin adding the sugar one tablespoon at a time, mixing between each addition. Continue beating until all the sugar is dissolved and stiff peaks begin to form.

Add the vanilla and mix until incorporated.

Pour the mixture into a piping bag and pipe small and large mounds onto the parchment paper lined baking sheet.

Add two chocolate chip eyes to each large mound and mini chocolate chip eyes to the small mounds.

Bake in the preheated oven for 45 minutes. When the baking time is up, turn off the oven and allow the cookies to rest in the warm oven for an hour.

Remove the cookies from the oven and allow them to cool completely.

Place the cooled ghost cookies on top of the iced cupcakes. The icing you put on earlier will hold them in place!

I think it’s so fun how you can arrange the cupcakes with the different sizes of ghosts!

These are so cute and fun for celebrating All Souls’ day.

More All Souls’ Day Resources

You can find tons more All Saints’/All Souls’ Day ideas for celebrating here.

You can find all of my resources for living the liturgical year in November here.