Interior Pumpkin Halloween Cake

By casamia-inlondon.com on October 31, 2013 • ( 0 )

I know, I am a bit biased. Actually I am totally biased but I hate those all-about-décor cakes. Period.

I know, you can find them everywhere by now, so I might be the only one thinking this way.

In fact, here in London it’s such a BIG deal! Impossible to have a kid’s birthday party without one of those pirates/fairy tale jumbo cake. I would understand if it was in US, with their jumbo-everything to which my beloved Americans seemed to be uniquely entitled. Instead, it is something apparently spreading all around the world – even in Italy and in France, where the ‘real’ patisserie tradition is very strong.

My problem is that I have never had the pleasure to try a good one (to be fair, I did once but it was quite a rarity!!) , they always look very nice but then the taste is quite poor, being them all quite tasteless and totally overpriced.

So, here my Halloween celebration cake.

Halloween

Interior Pumpkin Halloween Cake

Ingredients

230 gr Butter

300 gr caster sugar

200 g egg

1 lemon zest, grated

350 gr plain flour

6 gr baking powder

140 ml whole milk

4 drops orange food colouring

Method

Turn your oven on at 180°.

Line a half sheet pan with parchment paper and spray with nonstick cooking spray.

Butter your loaf tin and line it with parchment paper. Butter it again. You don’t want your batter to get in touch with the tin.

Set them aside.

Soften your butter together with the sugar until it is creamy.

Halloween Cookies Cutter

Break up your eggs and leave them in a measuring jug.

Sieve the flour and the baking powder together and add the lemon zest.

Add your eggs into the butter and sugar mixture, by inclusions, and whisk it until totally emulsified.

Add dry ingredients to the mixture and mix it with your spatula.

At the end, add the milk little by little until you have a dropping consistency.

You may not need all the milk stated above.

Once your batter is ready, transfer a little less than half to a large mixing bowl and add the food colouring.

Stir very well to distribute the colour.

Spread the coloured batter in an even layer, approximately 5 mm thick, in the prepared half sheet pan and bake until the cake is just barely done and feels firm when touched but doesn’t spring back.

Allow to col completely.

Put half of the remaining batter in the bottom of the loaf tin.

Place the pumpkin in the loaf tin, into the batter, upside down,

Don’t press the pumpkins all the way down, but just enough to keep them upright.

Place them as close together as possible.

Interior Pumpkin Halloween Cake

With the help of a piping bag, with the remaining batter, pipe it into the tine, making sure to fill any hard to reach area ad covering the pumpkins completely.

Bake it for 50 minutes or so, until is golden brown.

Check your cake with a clean knife to see if it’s cooked inside.

To have a nice and brown coat on the outside and a soft cake inside, when the cake is brown on the top, cover it with aluminium foil.

Once ready, remove your cake from the oven, put it on a cooling rack face down and leave it to cool completely.