How to Make a Pumpkin Cake!
HAPPY HALLOWEEN!
Many of you have asked me already, how you can make this lovely pumpkin by yourself, so here goes… It is not as difficult as it sounds.
I will give you below the two recipes that you need (to make the cakes and the ganache) and then I will provide you with the online tutorial that I followed to carve and decorate the cake. In this case, I am not the tutor, I am the pupil and this was my first attempt.
Let’s start then..
Cakes First!
First of all, we have to bake the cakes. As the pumpkin has by itself a certain height, I would advise you to go for three red velvet cakes, stacked on tope of each other.
I have already added the recipe on the website, so please click HERE to connect.
In addition to the recipe, you also need to make sure that you have enough fondant to cover your cakes at the end, a pumpkin made of 3 cakes from the above recipe, stacked on top of each other, will require:
1 kg. of orange fondant (4 x250 gr packs)
250 gr package of green fondant (1 x 250 gr pack)
Dark chocolate Ganache
After we finish with the actual baking of the cakes, and we let them cool down, we had better start with the cover ganache.
This sculpture is going to be a heavy one. If we try to assemble the three layers with buttercream, the entire sculpture will collapse, the ganache is more stable.
I have used dark chocolate for this ganache as it is, by itself is a more “solid” consistency chocolate than milk or white. Wherever we put the dark chocolate ganache, after it solidifies it stays!
Let’s go then to do this easy recipe:
Cover dark chocolate ganache
Ingredients
300 gr. double cream
450 gr. bitter chocolate
43 gr. glucose
70 gr. butter (cut in cubes)
Method
Right! First of all, we cut our bitter chocolate in small pieces and we melt it in a bain marie. It is safer to do this in this way as we may burn the chocolate if we use direct heat on a saucepan, and chocolate easily burns.
At the same time, we put the double cream and the glucose in a separate saucepan, stir a couple of times to help the glucose incorporate and then heat gently on the stove until it reaches boiling point.
When the chocolate melts, we remove the bowl away from any steam (that would destroy the chocolate and would solidify it rock hard) and then pour the double cream mixture we prepared above, little by little into the chocolate and we stir with a mariz or a wooden spoon.
It is really important to add very little of the double cream mixture each time, stir it to homogenise it and carry on until all the double cream has been incorporated properly.
At this stage, as our double cream was really hot, we need to wait until the temperature decreases to 40 degrees. When we reach this temperature, we add the butter in our mixture and we incorporate very well, until all the butter melts.
When that happens, that means that our ganache is ready. We empty the mixture into a flat medium size baking tray and we cover with cling film attached on the ganache to avoid creating a skin on the surface until we are ready to use it.
We leave it for a few hours until it sets.
That was it! Everything is ready and now we have to start creating.
I would suggest and advise starting the assembly the next day. Keep the ganache out of the fridge covered with the attached cling film and also cover the cakes well with cling film to prevent them from drying.
Now, over to the tutorial I followed, so please click below to start your creation.
Watch the tutorial from the beginning to the end paying attention what is going on before you start your little pumpkin, so you know what to expect:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1iecEqr4bik
Good Luck and Make it Spooky!!
