This pumpkin cake makes a great treat for grown-ups too, and it’s even more delicious with a buttercream and chopped nuts icing.
4 cups canned pumpkin
6 cups sugar
2 cup vegetable oil
6 eggs
6 cups flour
1 tsp salt
1 tsp baking powder
2 tsp baking soda
1 tsp ground cloves
2 tsp ground cinnamon
2 tsp ground nutmeg
Preheat oven to 200°C. Grease and flour two 10-inch Bundt pans. Blend the pumpkin, sugar, oil, and eggs. Sift remaining ingredients into a separate bowl. Mixing as you add it, spoon the pumpkin mixture into the dry mixture. Blend well. Pour the batter into the prepared pans. Bake until a toothpick inserted in the middles comes out clean (around an hour and 15 minutes). Allow cakes to cool in pans for five minutes. Release, and after completely cooled, decorate.
If you’re new to cake decorating or cake sculpting, you’ll find the Jack O’ Lantern cake is fun and easy. And, if you’re already experienced, you will have all the more fun by adding intricate details. Either way, this Jack O’ Lantern cake is sure to light up faces at your Halloween party.
Cake instructions
Before you whip up a batch of buttercream, take out a piece of paper and sketch some Jack O’ Lantern faces. If you have kids at the house, enlist their help. Searching “Google Images" for Jack O’ Lantern will also deliver lots of ideas. Once you’ve narrowed down your favourites to a final selection, practice drawing it to make the piping easier.
Ready? Here we go!
- Bake two Bundt cakes. Coincidentally, pumpkin works like a charm for a Halloween sculpture cake because of its firmness (see recipe below). Butter cake works well too.
- After releasing and cooling the two cakes, level the bottoms.
- Ice the bottoms with orange buttercream (non-crusting is best for this project). Place one upside down, and the other on top, so the iced bottoms fit together.
- Now, cover the cake with orange buttercream. As you smooth your icing, you can work with the natural indentions left by the Bundt pans that mimic the vertical lines on a real pumpkin.
- Using the orange buttercream, pipe the outlines of the facial features. If you make a mistake, just smooth it and start over.
Now for the fun part! Here are a few ideas for creating the details of your Jack O’ Lantern’s face. Fit an icing bag with a small star tip and fill with chocolate buttercream. Fill in the eyes, nose and gaps between the teeth.
- After completing the step above, add details such as pupils to the eyes with icing candies, like M&M’s and black liquorice.
- To make your Jack O’ Lantern glow, use yellow gel instead of chocolate buttercream (remember not to cover the teeth and other places that would be left intact in a real Jack O’ Lantern).
- Instead of piping facial features, bring Jack to life by modelling eyes, nose, teeth and any other features you want to add with rolled butterceam icing or marzipan.
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