Saturday, April 23, 2016

Pumpkin Birthday Cake


I saw a cool cake on pinterest when I was researching Lucky's Halloween Birthday Party, a pumpkin layer cake where the layers were created in a bunt cake pan.  The holes are filled in with some cupcakes and then when frosted you have a round pumpkin.  Worth trying, right?


For Lucky's actual birthday, I did a test cake that was one half of the pumpkin.  Since I wanted to have cake on his birthday anyway, this was going to work out fine.  I created one "layer" and 4 cupcakes out of one box of cake mix and made the top half of the pumpkin (not pictured).  It looked great!  Now on morning of Lucky's party I had to assemble the whole thing.  I used two boxes* of cake mix to create a few cupcakes plus the bunt cake layers shown above.

*I actually had to use 3 boxes of cake mix since one of my layers broke when I was taking it out of the pan.  AHHH!  I crumbled up this cake and turned it into "dirt" with sour gummy worms for an extra Halloween treat.  From a fail into a win!  


Each layer got a cupcake surrounded in chocolate frosting on the bottom and top to fill the bunt cake holes.  


The outside of the cake would be orange, but the inside layer was filled with chocolaty goodness.  


I was afraid I'd break a layer again as I put the cake together but it actually went pretty smoothly.


Does this count as more than a 2 layer cake since I'm also layering in cupcakes?


I used store bought frosting for the cake... I've never made a frosting that I like that much and I just didn't have time to do it from scratch anyway!  I did enlist the help of my electric mixer to create deep orange. 


I don't remember how many food coloring drops I used, but let's just say that if I were dyeing 100g of yarn that I would have used less food coloring to get a deeper color than I needed for these 2 tubs of white frosting.  


I had just enough frosting to do the outside of my pumpkin cake plus the top of some mini pumpkin cupcakes (not shown here.)  When icing the cake the pumpkin ridges came from the icing spatula versus the shape of the bunt layers, but I'm still really happy with the overall shape.  Maybe next time I'll use less cake batter for each layer to make a shorter pumpkin, but I think that it looks pretty awesome, don't you?


Lastly I put a trimmed cupcake upside down on top to make the stem and frosted it with chocolate frosting.


I'm thrilled with out this cake turned out!  It is more effort than a normal layer cake because I only have one bunt cake pan so I had to do two (cough, three) batches in the oven.  I considered drawing on a Jack-o-lantern face on the side but I couldn't bring myself to mess up my lovely pumpkin.  What if I didn't love the face I drew? I love how this little cake turned out and it is perfect for a Halloween themed birthday party!  


I wish I had some taken some photos of the cake sliced, but I spent the party visiting with my guests and playing with Lucky.  Maybe next Halloween I'll do this again!