Halloween Birthday Cake

I have been doing some baking lately, which prompted me to take some pictures of my most recent work, and I realized I never got to posting about Wes' birthday cake.  It was a fun challenge for me, so I didn't want to forget it. This is a VERY belated post, but I hope those of you still reading Nisamina enjoy it.  

Wes' birthday is on Halloween, and I had some leftover fondant, and I had been wanting to try making a pumpkin cake.  A friend of mine, and actual professional baker, suggested using a bundt cake to get the pumpkin shape.  It seemed like a great choice, but I hadn't thought it, so I googled pumpkin bundt cakes, and I found lots of examples.  I found this little tutorial, which seemed simple enough, so I decided to try it.

Then I asked Wes what kind of cake he wanted for his birthday.  He said chocolate with chocolate mint frosting.  I thought a pumpkin flavored cake would be much better in pumpkin form, but who am I to disappoint.  So I baked some chocolate mini bundts (I chose mini because my larger bundt pan is extra fancy and actually wouldnt make the shape of a pumpkin) and got to work turning them into pumpkins.  I put frosting between two mini bundts and sandwiched them together.  Then I filled the centers with frosting to get the tops even.  Then I did a crumb coat of frosting.  I dyed the fondant I had orange and little bit of it green, and I got to rolling it out.  I covered the little pumpkins in the orange fondant, pressing the fondant into the ridges to get the pumpkin shape.  Then I used the green to mold some stems, and I cut out some leaves.

I did all the decorating during one miraculously long nap time.  It was quite a rush, and I probably was not as careful as I could have been, but I was happy that I even got to do it!  The bottoms of the pumpkins were a bit wrinkly cause I went to fast, but I think the fact that they are supposed to be pumpkins made the design less forgiving.  Here is what I got!

I really liked how the stems turned out.  They were super easy.  I just rolled kind of a tear drop shape, then I flattened the bottom, twisted the top, then made finger prints to stick them to the pumpkin and give it some more shape.  I also rolled some little viney things to put in the center of the pumpkin cluster.

 

I was really happy with the result, but I decided to try the last step in the tutorial.  I put some cocoa powder on a cue tip and ran it down the ridges of the bundt cakes.  This was supposed to give it a more antique looked.  Looking at the photos now, I think I almost prefer them without it, but once I started, I had to do the whole thing.  They still looked good. 

Wes was thoroughly surprised! He was not expecting a cake like this!  It was good, but I think it was a little weird to cut into a pumpkin and taste chocolate mint.  But that's ok.  Next time I'll do a pumpkin flavored bundt!