Chocolate Pumpkin Halloween Cake

This Chocolate Pumpkin Cake is my entry into this month's Calendar Cakes...and no surprises for guessing that the theme is Halloween! I was quite intrigued by a cake with pumpkin puree in as I've never baked with pumpkin before so I thought I'd give it a go.

The recipe for this cake also includes nutmeg, cinnamon, buttermilk and soft dark brown sugar, so overall along with the pumpkin the resulting cake was really moist. It also wasn't overly chocolately and the nutmeg and cinnamon gave it a nice warm flavour. It was slightly reminiscent of a ginger cake.

I used tinned pumpkin puree which you can get from Waitrose or even Amazon if you can't find it in the supermarket. If you've got the time or inclination you can also make your own pumpkin puree using a recipe such as this one.

Inbetween the cake layers is a tasty orange cream cheese frosting, you can find the recipe here. I really like the frosting and would certainly consider using it with other cakes. To make sure my cake wasn't wonky I also levelled the two bottom layers using a cake leveller which you can see above.

To finish off the cake I made some chocolate leaves which you can see in the second picture. They provided nice decoration and also added to the autumnal feel of the cake. The recipe for the cake and frosting can be found on the Country Living website.

If you're making a Halloween bake in the next couple of days then we'd love for you to enter it into our Calendar Cakes challenge. Calendar Cakes is hosted jointly here at Laura Loves Cakes and also by Rachel over at Dolly Bakes. Rachel is hosting this month so check out the details here.

 

I'm also entering this cake into The One Ingredient Challenge hosted this month by Nazima at Franglais Kitchen and alternately by Laura at How to Cook Good Food . The ingredient this month is pumpkin and squash.

Finally, I'm also entering into Simple and in Season which is hosted by Fabulicious Food and the guest host this month is also Nazima at Franglais Kitchen.