David’s Dish: How to Make a Pumpkin Cake

LANSING, Mich. (WILX) - At this time of the year, everyone is jumping on the pumpkin craze even if autumn has not officially started.

Studio 10 followed suit with a September edition David’s Dish.

WILX anchor David Andrews joined Studio 10 with a fall inspired dish and showed us how to bake and decorate a Pumpkin Shaped Cake.

Below are ingredients of the base of the cake.

• Bundt cake pan with fluted sides that resemble a pumpkin’s iconic shape
• Ground flaxseed meal
• Baking spray made with flour
• 2 baked pumpkin Bundt cakes (I used this recipe and doubled it to make 2 cakes for the full-size pumpkin version. There’s a scaled-down version of this recipe below if you want a smaller cake that’s just the top of the pumpkin.)
• Cooling rack
• Cream cheese frosting ingredients (see below)
• 2 small spreaders (for frosting the cake) (you might like this set: $16 at Target.com)
• A sugar cone ice cream cone (the ones with the flat bottoms, as opposed to a pointy bottom, work best!)
• A cake stand or large plate
• Optional piping bag with small round tip for extra decorations
• Optional sprinkles or edible glitter

Wait to prepare your Bundt pan until right before the cake goes into the oven. Preheat the oven, prepare your cake batter, then prepare your pan. Spray the pan liberally with baking spray. Use way more than you think you need, taking special care to get every nook and cranny. Dust the sprayed pan with flax meal. You’ll use a lot of the meal, as you can see in the image above. Add it in small increments and tilt your pan to the side and gently shake the meal until your pan is completely covered with the meal. Try to avoid missing spots or your pumpkin might come out looking like a warty variety! Immediately pour your batter into the pan and place into your preheated oven. Once you’ve baked your cake, it’s important to allow no less than 5 minutes to cool in the Bundt pan. (But don’t let it cool for much longer than 5 minutes. If it cools for longer it might stick in the pan.) Then you’ll place a cooling rack on top of the Bundt pan and flip it over. If you’ve used enough spray and flax meal it should release immediately. To get a perfectly flush pumpkin shape when you join up the top and bottom layers, you’ll need to trim the bottoms (the flat sides) of each cake. Start with your cake flat side up, as seen above, then, using a serrated knife you’ll very gently trim the first cake until you’ve got a nice, flat surface. Discard the top or save it to be used for making cake pops! Now that you have both cakes baked, cooled, and trimmed, it’s time to stack them. You’ll place your bottom layer flat side up and then place your top layer flat side down. The flat sides will face one another creating a round pumpkin shape. Take care to line up the fluted patterns on the cake so the top matches the bottom.

Tip: You can add frosting between the layers, but you’ll need to keep it just in the middle of the cake. It won’t be pretty to have visible icing seeping out of the sides. Nobody likes a leaky pumpkin!

Below are ingredients for the cream cheese frosting.

• 1 8-ounce block cream cheese, softened
• ¼ cup butter
• 1 teaspoon vanilla extract
• 1 tablespoon milk
• 3 cups confectioners sugar
• One box of gel food coloring containing green, red, and yellow (or orange if you can find it) You’ll add in the coloring to your liking

In a stand mixer blend your butter and cream cheese. Next, add your milk and vanilla and whip until combined. Then slowly add your confectioners sugar until well combined. Divide your frosting into 2 small bowls. You’ll want about a third of it to be dyed green and the rest to be dyed orange. If your food coloring box only has primary colors, you’ll want to mix them to get the green (yellow +blue) and orange (yellow + red) colors you need. Have fun with it!

First, you’ll want to cover your ice cream cone with green frosting. Next, you’ll gently place it in the center hole of the cake to form a pumpkin stem. Then with a small spatula you’ll add dollops of the orange frosting all around the top of the cake. You’ll gently encourage some of the icing to drip down the sides, creating a cascade effect. Be patient with the frosting. If you give it a few seconds you’ll notice it drips down the sides with very little effort from your spatula. Bonus vines: Take the remainder of your green frosting and add it to a piping bag with a small round tip. Carefully pipe some pumpkin vines from the center outward all around the cake.

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