Savoring Spoon

During a long hiatus from making cake, I finished residency, moved to a new city, and am continuing with my lab research and starting clinical fellowship in a few months. This cake is a pumpkin cake with vanilla bean buttercream was made for a dear mentor’s birthday celebrations. The pumpkins are made of fondant, the tutorial on pumpkin making can be found here. Use a toothpick to wrap the green vine around.

In terms of layer cake making planning I recommend splitting to 3 evenings:

First day – bake the cake, cool it overnight room temp

Second day – make fondant figures and let dry overnight

Third day – crumb coat, then frost and decorate the cake.

A few tips on the cake: (1) use a measuring scale for dry ingredients, it will be more exact than using measuring cups (2) sift your powdered sugar before frosting if you want it to be **Extra** smooth. (3) When making frosting, add the heavy whipping cream slowly and scoop some buttercream out before you add all of it to use for making stiffer decorations (e.g. writing on the cake).

The kitties were very interested in the cake, didn’t eat any of the main cake but found the icing spatula and had quite a feast until I found them.

Enjoy!

Pumpkin Cake with Vanilla Bean Buttercream

Makes one 3-layered 9-inch diameter cake

Print Recipe

Ingredients

Cake

500 grams all purpose flour = 4 cups
4 teaspoons baking powder
2 teaspoons baking soda
2 teaspoons salt
3 teaspoons cinnamon
4 teaspoons pumpkin pie spice
2 cups vegetable oil
8 each large eggs
400 grams dark brown sugar = 2 cups
30 ounces pumpkin puree = 2 cans, each can is 15 ounces, 425 grams
3 teaspoons vanilla extract
200 grams granulated sugar = 1 cup

Frosting

3 each whole vanilla bean
1135 grams powdered sugar = 2.5 cups
2.5 cups unsalted butter = 562.5 grams
7.5 tablespoons heavy cream = 112.5 mls
1.25 teaspoons salt

Instructions

Day 1 – Bake cake

Preheat oven to 350F
Add cake dry ingredients in your largest bowl (flour, baking powder, baking soda, salt, cinnamon, pumpkin pie spice)
Mix cake wet ingredients in a medium bowl (oil, eggs, brown sugar, whtie sugar, pumpkin puree, vanilla extract)
Pour wet to dry ingredients and mix till well combined using a spatula
Butter and flour dust three 9-inch pans. Full wet a heat strip and slide onto the outside rim of each pan.
Pour batter in pan, filling 1/2 to just under 3/4 of pan depth. Do NOT fill completely!
Bake until toothpick in the center comes out clean. Start checking at 30 minutes. For me, baking 3 pans in my oven at 350F took 35 -40 minutes to get to this stage.
Cool on wire rack 30 min until cool enough to touch the pan. Then flip the pan upside down and the cake should slide right out onto the cooling rack. Cool completely overnight. Once cooled you can wrap in plastic wrap and save in the fridge until you are ready to decorate.

Day 2 – Make pumpkins

Color white fondant to desired shade of orange using food coloring and roll into little balls the size of the pumpkins you want. Pat the top down so it looks squattier, like a pumpkin. Use a toothpick to make likes down the side like a pumpkin. Make sure you go all the way around the pumpkin so lines meet at the bottom and you don't end up with pumpkins with only half lines looking sloppy.
Color white fondant to brown with food coloring and roll into a long log, and then cut it into little pieces for the wood stalk of the pumpkin. Take a blunt fondant pusher pen (or a thin disposable chopstick) and make a dent on the top of the pumpkin. Brush small amount of water and use fondant pusher/toothpick to work the stalk into the pumpkin.
Color white fondant to leaf green mixed with jade green (very important, do not use default green colors, it will look very bright and artificial and not like a real leaf) and roll into a think log. Roll the log around a toothpick then pull it off keeping the curled structure, and work into the pumpkin stalk with your fondant pusher.
Use a flower cookie/fondant cutter to make white flowers after rolling out white fondant about 3 mm thick. Then save some white fondant, dye it pale yellow with food coloring and then pull off little pieces to roll into a ball that you flatten to make the flower center. Brush tiny drop of water onto the flower before you add the center so that it can stick.
Brush some water on your pumpkin and put the flower onto it. Let entire pumpkin harden overnight. Refer to this link for photo tutorial on pumpkins.

Day 3 – Frosting (can combine with day 2)

Take butter out and let come to room temperature. You can let it do this while you make the pumpkins, or you can microwave a little (10s at at time and flip) to get it room temp faster.
Pre-sift all the powdered sugar you plan to use into a large bowl that is NOT your stand mixer bowl.
With the stand mixer paddle attachment, beat the butter on medium for 2-3 min until creamy. Open vanilla beans and harvest the beans. Add and beat again for 30s to mix with the butter.
Add powdered sugar gradually, beat on low after each addition of powdered sugar, scrape the bowl, and then add more. Add heavy cream slowly as you go. Stop after you have added 5-6 tablespoons. This consistency is good for piping words, save it and dye it black for writing on the center of the cake later (alternatively you can buy black frosting at Michaels to save this step). Full amount of heavy cream is 7.5 tablespoons to make it nice and fluffy.
Cut rounded tops of baked cake layers with a cake leveler.
Apply frosting to cake board, add cake and apply frosting to complete 3 layer cake. Check with level to make sure your cake is completely flat before proceeding to the next step. (phone one is ok, if you have one from Home Depot you can put on the cake, even better).
Crumb coat the cake by applying thin frosting. Let set in fridge 30 minutes.
Finish frosting the cake by applying one big dollop to the top, then filling an icing piping bag with your widest round tip and going around the sides. Use bench scraper and off-set spatula to complete frosting on your cake turn table. Use your large round tip to make double-balls on which you place pumpkins on the top of the cake. Use a medium size round tip to make the cake lower border. Use a Wilton #3 tip to write on the cake and draw the faces. For the eyes I used candy eyes I got at Michaels but you can make your own with fondant too.