With Halloween fast approaching, Jenny Paulin, family food blogger of Mummy Mishaps, has shared her show stopping pumpkin cake with us. This is the perfect way for kids to get creative, filling it with treats (or tricks)! Which ever you decide, this cake will certainly create an element of surprise for those indulging.
Ingredients For The Cake
• 250g unsalted butter, softened
• 250g caster sugar
• 200g self raising flour
• 50g cocoa powder
• 5 eggs
Ingredients For The Buttercream
• 100g butter - cold
• 200g icing sugar
• dash of milk
• 1 tsp vanilla extract
Ingredients For the decoration
• 1 tube of orange coloured food liquid gel (I used Dr Oetker)
• 200g full fat cream cheeser
• 250g good quality white chocolate
• • sweets and / or chocolate to fill your cake for the surprise filling
• black ready to roll fondant icing
• 1 large chocolate flake
Instructions
1. Pre heat the oven to 180oC /160o C (fan)
2. Grease a large Pyrex bowl or, if you have them, use some 8inch hemisphere pans (you will need to use the Pyrex bowl again unless you have two)
3. Place the butter and sugar in a bowl of a free standing mixer (or you can do this by hand) and beat together for approx. 5 minutes until pale and soft
4. Then add the eggs and 2 spoonsful of sieved flour (to prevent curdling) and beat well for a few more minutes
5. Fold in the remaining sieved flour and cocoa powder
6. Divide the batter in half and pour into your prepared tins/bowls - my bowl took 40-45 minutes to cook each cake in
7. Once cooked, remove from the pans and leave to cool completely.
*to make your vanilla buttercream*
1. beat the butter for a few minutes to soften it
2. carefully add the icing sugar a little at a time, and beat to make a smooth creamy mixture
3. add the vanilla extract and a dash of milk to make the buttercream lovely and creamy
*to make your orange pumpkin frosting*
1. take half of the buttercream and place in a bowl with the cream cheese and all of the food colouring
2. Meanwhile melt your white chocolate BUT keep 2 chocolate buttons back for decoration
3. Pour the melted chocolate into the bowl with the other frosting ingredients inside, and beat well until your end up with a lovely silky smooth orange frosting. Leave to one side while you prepare your sponge
4. Carefully cut each sponge in half so you end up with 4 sponge layers
5. You need to use the two curved layers as the top and bottom layers
6. From each layer of sponge, you need to scoop out some sponge from the centre’s - important to note that for the top and bottom layers you must not go all the way through the sponge
7. Then using the vanilla buttercream, stick and stack the sponges - being careful not to add buttercream near the holes.
8. Before you add the final layer, pour your treats into the cavity and then close with the top layer of sponge
9. Carefully, using a sharp knife, remove any sticky outy sponge bits from the sides
10. Then cover completely with the orange chocolate frosting
11. Stick the flake in the top centre to make the stalk of your pumpkin
12. Then roll out 2 pieces of black fondant and cut out tringles or circles and stick on to make eyes. I then added 2 white chocolate buttons to stick onto the black fondant to make the eyes (i used a bit of the frosting to stick them on with)
13. Then cut a smile or maybe an evil or gruesome mouth out of the black fondant icing and stick on
14. Keep in the fridge to set.