Thanksgiving Dessert: Pumpkin Cake

This year we are driving about an hour south to my cousin's house for Thanksgiving dinner. It will be the largest Thanksgiving celebration that I've attended in years - the good old extended family dinner with aunts, uncles and grandparents!

I don't have a token "dish" that I bring to people's houses for dinner; I'm more of a baker than a cook. I think I'll bring a pumpkin cake, and if I get ambitious, decorate it like this pumpkin shaped one I made last month.



I got the recipe from CDKitchen.com and since it you make it in a bundt pan, it isn't too hard to convert into a pumpkin shape.

Ingredients:
3 1/4 cups all purpose flour
1 tablespoon baking powder
2 1/2 teaspoons ground cinnamon
1 teaspoon baking soda
1 teaspoon ground nutmeg
1/4 teaspoon salt
1 1/2 cup pumpkin puree, fresh or canned (I used canned)
1/2 cup applesauce (all I had was pomegranate applesauce and the cake tasted fine)
1 1/2 cup granulated sugar
1/4 cup margarine, softened
3 large egg whites
2 teaspoons vanilla extract
cooking spray
3 tablespoons dark or light brown sugar
1 tablespoon dark rum
1 teaspoon skim milk
3 tablespoons powdered sugar

Cake Directions:
Preheat oven to 350 degrees F. Combine first 6 ingredients; set flour mixture aside. Combine pumpkin and applesauce; set aside. Beat granulated sugar and margarine in a large bowl at medium speed of a mixer until well-blended (about 5 minutes). Add egg whites and vanilla, beating well.

Add flour mixture to sugar mixture alternately with pumpkin mixture, beginning and ending with flour mixture. Pour batter into a 12-cup Bundt pan coated with cooking spray. Bake at 350 degrees F. for 50 minutes or until a wooden pick inserted in center comes out clean. Cool in pan 10 minutes; remove from pan.

Icing Directions:
Combine brown sugar, rum, and milk in a small saucepan, and cook over low heat until brown sugar dissolves. Remove sugar mixture from heat, and add powdered sugar, stirring with a whisk. Spoon glaze over warm cake.

Instead of using their icing directions, I used store-bought cream cheese frosting and dyed it orange. The pumpkin stem was made with green Twizzlers. They actually packages of multicolored Twizzlers (I got mine at Walmart). I added some vines with green piping gel.

How to Make a Totally Awesome 80s Cake - NOT!

A girl that I work with is about the same age as me, and we often reminisce about the cartoons and toys that we enjoyed in the 80s. For her birthday I researched 80s themed cakes and decided on a Rubik's Cube cake. I got the pattern and fondant recipe from a website online. From the pictures, it is obvious that someone had some success with it, however I'm going to offer tips and an analysis on where it might have gone wrong...

The pattern calls for a double cake recipe split into three 9x9 square cake pans. It said you could either use a box mix or start from scratch. The pattern also calls for handmade fondant. I decided since I was making the fondant from scratch that I'd just do a box mix cake. I used two boxes of Duncan Hines yellow cake mix, doubling the recipe accordingly, measuring the batter and equally dividing it between 8x8 square pans. I do not have 9x9 square pans which the recipe called for, and was worried that the cake was going to be too tall because of it. On the contrary, the cake was too short and the sides were too wide, not making it a perfect cube. In fact, I could have used at least another half batch of cake!


When assembling the cake you can either design it to have an "in progress look" with the center cake at a right angle to the top and bottom layers, or you can have all three layers flush to each other. I decided to have it be boring and flush because I didn't want it to get ruined in transit from home to work in the car.

Instead of buying a package of multicolored fondant, I decided to follow the included recipe which calls for mini-marshmallows, water, and confectioner's sugar. Worst idea ever. What a sticky nightmare that was! And then to color the fondant you are instructed to put balls of the creation in baggies and hand knead the color in. The goo was sticking to the inside of the baggies, then I ran out of red coloring (because no matter how much you add, it's still be a shade of pink). I took my 40% off coupon to the craft store and bought a box of fondant pre-stained to red, yellow, blue and green. I still needed my white and orange goo baggies for the project, but least four of the six colors were decent.


The instructions provide you with two ways to get a black background for underneath the fondant squares. At that point, I just settled for some tubs of store-bought chocolate! I gave myself taste and creativity points, but definitely lacked in the presentation category.


If you decide to make one of your own, use an 8x8 pan, cut more off the sides before assembling, and save your 40% off coupons and just buy the fondant. It will cost more but will save you a couple hours of wasted agony and your squares will look better. If you do decide to make your own with marshmallows, challenge someone to solving the puzzle of a real Rubik's Cube while you make it - they will probably successfully finish before you do!

Prehistoric Party

I bookmarked a pattern for 3-D dinosaur cake that I found online a while ago, wondering if I'd ever find an appropriate occasion to make it for. I came upon an inappropriate occasion and decided to go with it anyway.

A coworker friend had a landmark birthday this week, so instead of a lame over the hill birthday cake, I decided to rock the dinosaur cake sculpture instead. It sounds mean, but we frequently pick on each other about our ages. She teases me about not being familiar with musicians, actors, television shows, and movies from before my time, and likewise, I tease her for being around for all of those things.

My department threw her a dinosaur themed party with dollar store dinosaur decorations and party hats. She, of course, knew right away why the dinosaur theme - because she's "old like a dinosaur."

*Dodging items being thrown at me through cyberspace*

Anyway, this is how I did it:

The pattern calls for two 9" cakes. Since I was serving a crowd, and was concerned about the space in my cake caddy, I made a full cake in an 8" round pan, and split a second cake between two 9" rounds. I used the 8" cake as the body of the dinosaur, cutting it into two semicircles and sandwiching them together with filling. I cut a little piece from the front to make a flat spot to rest the head against, which also helped to shorten the length.

I traced a 9" round pan onto thick scrapbook paper, and used this as a template for the cake shape carving. I folded the circle paper in half, and cut it down the center to work on one half at a time. I folded the first semicircle into two symmetrical halves, and used the center line as a starting point. The pattern did not provide exact measurements for the cuts, so I decided to make the square pieces 3" on each side. By cutting out the two 3" squares, this left the four rounded triangle pieces slightly unmatched so I trimmed a little off the base of the longer triangles. The triangle from each side of the semicircle will eventually get paired with the triangle from the top of the semicircle from the same side to make the hind legs.

One of the 3" squares was cut in half, the other in quarters. The half square pieces are used as the foot of the front legs, and the quarters are used as the front legs, and as the toes of the hind legs.

The second semicircle was basically sketched free-hand, following the pattern. Without exact measurements, I decided to start by finding the center line of the semicircle, and began to draw the front of the neck there. I made the base of the neck and the base of the tail about the same width. The rounded triangle piece from this semicircle is used to bulk up the base of the tail. There is an extra piece left over that you can cut up and put under the head.

Before cutting up the second 9" round, make sure your paper cutouts will look right on the body of the dinosaur. If they work, place your papers on top of the second 9" round and make the cuts. I "glued" the rounded triangles for hind legs together with icing, and used icing to glue the rectangle and square pieces for front legs as well. I recommend cutting the cake in half, and making the cuts one side at a time.

Making two batches of cake, I still had an extra 9" round to play with since I made a double wide dinosaur body with an entire cake in an 8" round pan. I used some of the extra cake to trace an second head, making the head and neck double wide and more proportioned to the body. Remember, if you split one cake between two 9" rounds for the entire sculpture, there won't be extra cake other than the funny shaped piece that you can cut up and put under his head (which I forgot to do).

I frosted the cake using green colored icing. The pattern says to use a thin layer of icing, and then to use the star tip to make stars over the body. I just put a regular amount of frosting on the cake, scrapped the star tip, and used green sprinkles for a scaly effect instead.

The plates on the back and tail can be made using stiff gum paste frosting cut into diamond shapes, or even candy corn. I used red sour gummy dinosaurs as the back plates, and cut some gummies into tiny triangles for the tail plates. I cut orange gummies for finger and toe nails, and blue ones for the eyes.

Be sure to check out the original pattern from wikihow.com.

Find this, and other cakes, on my Cakes Flickr set.

Horsing Around

In an attempt to making work on the weekend fun, we had a horse themed party this weekend celebrating the beginning of Track Season at the nearby Saratoga Gaming & Raceway. I made a cake shaped like a horse, of course. If you ever want to make a cake for a horse lover or a theme party, here's the basic step by step of what I did.

I used a yellow cake mix (shhhhh) and a 13x9 pan. After the cake is cooled completely, remove it from the pan and put it onto a cutting board.


I cut the neck/chin outline first. It's a little triangular shaped piece, and I cut it left of center at the bottom of the cake. The top left corner I cut at an angle, starting at about the center of the left hand side and rounded a little to the right, ending about two inches from the top left corner. The back of the horses neck is cut from about the center of the top at a downward slope to about a third of the way down the top right side. Excuse the bad blurry pictures - good natural light was unavailable.

Bad blurry picture

After carving the cake, remove the triangular neck piece and move it to the top for an ear. I used chocolate frosting for a brown horse, but any flavor or color will work.


After having your base horse color frosting down, it's time to add the facial features, bridle, and the reins. Black licorice can be used, however I used Twizzler's Pull and Peal licorice because they are longer and more flexible, but mostly because they don't taste like black licorice. I used Rolos for part of the bridle as well, but Life Savers could also be used. I made the eye with a blob of fluffy white whipped frosting and a green Dots candy left over from our snacks at the drive-ins.


The mane is done last, because it overlaps the bridle and reins. I used white whipped frosting and tip #21 (the star tip). Start at the top of the head squeezing the icing bag lifting upwards. I released pressure and pulled the bag away to get the tapered look. It's relatively easy to do, but I recommend a few practice strokes on a cutting board. I colored the chocolate frosting with brown icing dye to make it a little darker for his nose.


With enough ambition, the spare corner pieces can be frosted with orange frosting for carrots, used to turn the horse into a unicorn, or they can be eaten to make sure the cake is suitable for serving to others.

Here are a few other cakes I've made before.

The Bunny Cake

My newest creation was of the edible variety. Of course the Bunny Cake is not new to me, it's an annual tradition in my family. My mom made it every year when I was growing up, and I always got to help. My involvement began as making the bunny ears, and I slowly graduated to sprinkling on the coconut and giving him eyes and whiskers, then eventually to getting to ice him. I knew I was grown up when I got to carve it.

This is not the traditional two dimensional bunny cake that many are familiar with, with the round face and a second round cake cut in half for two ears. This is a magnificent 3-D cake sculpture. The best part is that it looks really hard but it's really quite simple to make, it's only as hard as you want to make it.


The cake recipe can be anything you want from vanilla to carrot cake, and from a box or from scratch. I always make a carrot cake and use cream cheese frosting, because thats how my mom always made it and it wouldn't be right to me any other way.

You can add two tablespoons of meringue powder to the cake batter to reduce the rising in the center during the baking process if you want. I prefer my bunny to have a little roundedness to his body, however.

Make the cake according to your favorite recipe, and pour into one or two 8" or 9" round cake pans, depending on the amount of cake your recipe is for. I split it into two 9" rounds in case something goes wrong in the carving process. Let the cake cool completely before removing it from the pan and carving. If you are of the "Type A" impatient variety, like myself, make it in the morning or the night before so it has plenty of time to cool. Still-warm cake is difficult to carve and manipulate, and it tends lace your icing with crumbs.

If you want a skinny bunny you can use a cake leveler to remove "the hump", or if you like you bunny rounded or are feeling lazy, just leave it be. Place the cake upside down on a flat surface such as a cutting board. Cut a straight line right down the diameter of the cake, trying to get it in the center as best as possible. If your oven is not level, no need to get out the tools or yell at your handy man, just line up your center line as symmetrical as possible. Congrats, the hardest part is over.

So you have your cake cut in half, with the bottom side facing up. Frost both halves on the bottom-side-up side only. Take the two frosted halves and make a semicircular frosting sandwich with them. Place it so that its standing up on the plate/cake board that you plan on serving it on. Choose a cake board or plate that will accommodate for the length of the semicircle, as well as a couple extra inches for the bunny tail.

Cut a triangular wedge for the neck. To do this, figure out where you want its head to end and back to begin. Cut this triangular wedge so that the side of the wedge closest to the head is maybe 1-1.5" long and the side by the back goes straight down maybe 1.5-2". Move this wedge to the opposite side for a tail. Now ice the entire body. If you use white frosting, you can sprinkle shaved coconut on top for fur. For chocolate icing, I guess you could dye to coconut brown or drop it all together.

Decorate his face with candy. I use jelly beans, but you could use M&Ms, Skittles, whatever. My mom always used three pieces of raw spaghetti noodles for whiskers, but I like my candy and use red licorice.

Cut a paper plate or large index card in the shape of bunny ears. These materials are thick and sturdy enough to stand up on their own and slide easily right into the cake where they stay in place. I put them into the neck groove.

You can garish the plate with green dyed coconut for grass and jelly beans for easter eggs.


Tips:

• Let the cake cool before manipulating it
• Make two rounds, it will be a skinnier bunny but you get a second chance if something goes wrong. You can always bulk it up with frosting.
• Frost the neck area last, thats where you'll pick up a lot of crumbs.
• Sprinkle coconut on right away before the frosting begins to harden
• Make sure you have the coconut before beginning so you don't have to send your husband to the store. By the time you get the coconut, the frosting will be hardened and your bunny will shed coconut. Not that I would know from experience; I just assume that is what would happen ;-)
  

Check out some other cakes I've made