Pumpkin Shaped Chocolate Cake

Our daughter turned 3 on Saturday, and we took a trip to the pumpkin patch to celebrate.  We have done this every year on her birthday since she was 1.  This year both sides of our family came with us, and we did this in place of a party like we've done the past two years.

Since we were going to the pumpkin patch, I thought a pumpkin cake would be fitting.

I used a bundt pan to make the pumpkin shape.  You can search Pinterest to see loads of ways to use bundt pans to make a pumpkin shaped cake.  My bundt pan is silicone, so it doesn't have quite the shape most pans have.  It doesn't make as defined ridges as I would have liked for the effect of a pumpkin look.

One side of the cake lined up perfectly, but the other side you can see (below) was off just a tad and showed the "joint" where the two bundt cakes met.

I made a chocolate cake that I thought was pretty delicious!  When you click to that recipe, you'll see an icing recipe that I'm sure is yummy too, but I actually make the cream cheese icing recipe from the Better Homes and Gardens cookbook.  Just about any icing would be good on this cake.

I needed to make more than the cake recipe said in order to baked two bundt cakes, so I made the recipe and then made half of the recipe (so 1.5 of the recipe) to make two cakes.

This cake is dense, moist (sorry if you hate that word-- ha!), and the perfect amount of chocolate.

To join the cake in the middle, I added cocoa powder to the cream cheese icing to make chocolate icing to keep the cake together.  I think the chocolate cream cheese icing was the best (Colin disagrees and thinks the plain cream cheese on the outside was the best.  It works out in marriage, because I can eat the middle, and he can eat the outside!).

I initially was going to add food coloring to the icing to make an orange pumpkin, but I decided to make a white pumpkin.  I added a little water to some of the chocolate icing to "paint" lines on the pumpkin cake.

The stem is an ice cream cone that I covered in icing and rolled in gold and red sprinkles.  I then put the cone in the freezer to set before putting it on the cake.

I then added a few sprinkles around the "stem" and at the bottom of the cake.

It's not the most professional looking cake, but Harlow loved it, and it was pretty tasty!

We kept it in an ice chest with dry ice while we were at the pumpkin patch (it was a warm day!).  Some of the icing came off as it touched the sides of the bowl covering it.  It didn't affect the taste, though!  If I make a pumpkin cake again, I think I'll search for a different bundt pan.  Other than that, it was a fun and delicious cake to make!