Halloween Chocolate Cake with Peanut Butter Icing

My oldest daughter turned 6 this month. I usually make a cake from scratch or alter a cake mix or go all out with the cake decor. Since I was making the cake with a 2 1/2 week old baby in the house, I needed to try to make an easier cake this year. This is what came out!

The cake is Duncan Hines Dark Chocolate Fudge box mix. It's a yummy cake and so much quicker and easier than the chocolate cakes I usually make from scratch. Yes, I prefer my scratch cakes, but if you put enough icing, any cake tastes delicious!

The icing is the one thing that's homemade. I'm an icing fan, so I think it's worth the bit of extra work to make your own instead of using store bought. The peanut butter icing recipe is from Brown Eyed Baker, and I covered the cake with her chocolate ganache recipe, too (in the same post as the icing recipe).

I knew I wouldn't have time to make my own cake decorations since I was home alone with a newborn. Thank goodness Halloween candy is out right now and comes in different shapes and colors! I used Reese's peanut butter pumpkins, bats, and ghosts. They all kind of looked liked blobs, so I used icing gel to differentiate them. The gel melted a bit on the bats, so you still can't tell they're bats 😂.  I used lollipop sticks (from Michael's, I think) to put the Reese's on the cake. I had the sprinkles already, but I think they're still available at Walmart with the fall cake items. The gold candles are from Walmart. The number 6 is a Wilton candy piece from Michael's. On the front of the cake is "Witch's Brew" Kit Kat green candy bars, and candy corn is along the back of the cake. The candy corn "leaked" a bit in the fridge. Let's pretend that's part of the Halloween aesthetic. 

The cake was yummy and perfect for an October birthday. If you have the time and the motivation, I definitely recommend making the cake from scratch. If you're short on time, the Duncan Hines mix is a good substitute. You don't have to tell anyone that it's a mix! The icing is good by itself...on a spoon...in case you wondered.

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!