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Jack o' Lantern
Halloween Cake - A Bundt Cake Treat!
By Samantha Mitchell
Just as Jack o' Lanterns can inspire
laughter, the heebie-jeebies, or a round of "Trick or Treat!"
so can your sculpted Jack o' Lantern cakes!
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 Halloween cake is
sure to light up faces at your next Halloween party.
Jack o' Lantern Cake Instructions
Before you whip up a batch of butter cream,
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 favorites to a final selection, practice drawing it
to make the piping easier.
Ready? Here we go!
1. Bake 2 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.
2. After releasing and cooling the 2
cakes, level the bottoms.
3. Ice the bottoms with orange butter cream
(non crusting is best for this project). Place one upside down, and the
other on top, so the iced bottoms fit together.
4. Now, cover the cake with orange butter cream.
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.
5. Using the orange butter cream, pipe
the outlines of the facial features. If you make a mistake, just smooth
it and start over. 5. Now for the fun part! Here are a few ideas for
creating the details of your Jack o' Lantern's face.
a. Fit an icing bag with a small star tip
and fill with chocolate butter cream. Fill in the eyes, nose and gaps
between the teeth.
b. After completing the step above, add
details such as pupils to the eyes with icing candies, like M&M's
and black licorice.
c. 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).
d. Instead of piping facial features,
bring Jack to life by modeling eyes, nose, teeth and any other features
you want to add (eyebrows?) with rolled butterceam icing or marzipan.
Just like a real Jack O' Lantern your
Bundt o' Lantern will have a hole in the top. Here are a few ways you
can put the lid on Jack.
a. Cover an ice cream cone with green or
chocolate buttercream and using icing, adhere this upside down over the
hole in the top. Then using a large leaf tip, pipe a few green leaves
around the top.
b. Model the stem and leaves with rolled
buttercream.
c. Save just enough batter from the
recipe below to make a cupcake. Trim it for the stem shape you want and
adhere with icing to the top.
And here's your pumpkin cake recipe!
Halloween Pumpkin Cake
Note: This pumpkin cake makes a great
treat for grown-ups too, and it's even more devilishly 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 350° F. Grease and flour
2 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 5 minutes. Release, and after completely cooled, decorate.
Serving Tip: This is even better tasting
and easier to work with after mellowing overnight, covered in the
refrigerator.
The Homemade Pumpkin Cake recipe is
adapted from "Cake Decorating Made Easy!" Here's what one
reader wrote about our Video Books:
"Incomparable! I've not opened
my other books now that I have yours...don't decorate another cake until
you've seen these Video Books!"
Pia, Lynnwood, WA
Last but not least, here's one more tip.
The quantity of liquid food coloring needed to concoct Halloween brown
and black will bring a bitter flavor to your butter cream. Here's what
you can do to keep the ghoulish elements in the design and out of the
icing:
• Instead of liquid food coloring, opt
for the more intense gel or paste forms. Can't find these locally? Try www.CandyLandCrafts.com
• Use chocolate for brown and start
with dark chocolate for black (and you won't need as much black food
coloring).
• Skip the chocolate and food
colorings, and use instead candy and cookies. String black licorice
works great for outlining. Crush, dark chocolate cookies or crumble dark
chocolate cake to use to fill in large areas, like around Jack's teeth.
Happy Halloween Cake Making!
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