LANSING, Mich. (WILX) – This time of year, everyone gets in on the pumpkin craze, even though fall hasn’t officially started.
Studio 10 followed suit with a September edition of David’s Dish.
WILX presenter David Andrews joined Studio 10 with an autumn-inspired dish and showed us how to make and decorate a pumpkin-shaped cake.
Below you will find the ingredients for the cake base.
- Bundt Cake Pan with fluted sides that resemble the iconic shape of a pumpkin
- Ground flaxseed meal
- Flour based cooking spray
- 2 Baked Pumpkin Bundt Cakes (I used this recipe and doubled it to make 2 cakes for the full size pumpkin version. There is a smaller version of this recipe below if you want a larger cake small one that only makes up the top of the pumpkin.)
- Cooling rack
- Cream Cheese Frosting Ingredients (see below)
- 2 small spreaders (for icing the cake) (you might like this set: $16 at Target.com)
- An ice cream cone shaped like a candy cone (those with a flat bottom, as opposed to a pointed bottom, work best!)
- A cake stand or large plate
- Optional piping bag with small round tip for additional decorations
- Optional edible glitter or sequins
Wait to prepare your Bundt pan until just before the cake goes in the oven. Preheat the oven, prepare your cake batter, then prepare your pan. Spray pan generously with baking spray. Use way more than you think you need, taking extra care to clean every nook and cranny. Sprinkle the pulverized pan with flax meal. You’ll use up a lot of the meal, as you can see in the picture above. Add it in small increments and tilt your pan on its side and gently shake the meal until your pan is completely covered with meal. Try to avoid missing spots, otherwise your pumpkin may look like the warty variety! Immediately pour your batter into the pan and place it in your preheated oven. Once you have baked your cake, it is important to let it cool for at least 5 minutes in the Bundt pan. (But don’t let it cool for more than 5 minutes. If it cools longer, it might stay in the pan.) Next, you’ll place a cooling rack over the Bundt pan and turn it over. If you’ve used enough spray and flax meal, they should release immediately. To get a perfectly flush pumpkin shape when you join the top and bottom layers, you will need to cut the bottom (the flat sides) of each cake. Start with your cake flat side up, as seen above, then, using a serrated knife, you will very gently cut the first cake until you have a nice flat surface. Discard the top or save it to use for making cake pops! Now that both cakes are baked, cooled and trimmed, it’s time to stack them. You will place your bottom layer flat side up, then place your top layer flat side down. The flat sides will face each other, creating a round pumpkin shape. Take care to line up the fluted designs on the cake so that the top matches the bottom.
Tip: You can add frosting between the layers, but you will need to keep it just in the middle of the cake. It won’t be pretty to have visible icing leaking out of the sides. Person love leaky pumpkins!
Below are the ingredients for the cream cheese frosting.
- 1 8-ounce block of cream cheese, softened
- ¼ cup butter
- 1 teaspoon of vanilla extract
- 1 tablespoon of milk
- 3 cups of icing sugar
- A box of gel food coloring containing green, red and yellow (or orange if you can find it) You will add the coloring to your taste.
In a stand mixer, combine your butter and cream cheese. Next, add your milk and vanilla and whisk until well combined. Then slowly add your icing sugar until everything is well mixed. Divide your frosting between 2 small bowls. You’ll want about a third dyed green and the rest orange. If your box of food coloring only contains primary colors, you will want to mix them to get the green (yellow + blue) and orange (yellow + red) colors you need. Have fun with it!
First, you will need to cover your ice cream cone with green icing. Then you will carefully place it in the center hole of the cake to form a pumpkin stem. Then, with a small spatula, you will add dollops of orange frosting all around the top of the cake. You will gently encourage some of the icing to flow down the sides, creating a waterfall effect. Be patient with the frosting. If you give it a few seconds, you’ll notice that it flows down the sides with very little effort from your spatula. Bonus Vines: Take the rest of your green frosting and add it to a piping bag fitted with a small round tip. Carefully arrange a few pumpkin vines from the center outwards all around the cake.
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