Halloween Cake Crazy Jack O 'Lantern - cake with pumpkin and chocolate

Preparation steps

• I found the idea for the pumpkin shape on the internet, unfortunately the recipe was just for a way to shape the outside. Biscuit and cream are a combination of my favorite recipes. You can of course make this cake in plain form. Or if you opt for a halloween cake next year then you can make a biscuit and cream of your choice. I hope this recipe will give you inspiration and ideas. I’m sorry I failed to add a recipe a few days before Halloween! If you are making a plain cake according to this recipe then feel free to throw out the colors. The white cream was supposed to be purple but unfortunately I couldn’t find that color in time nor did I have the blue to mix with the red, so I left the cream white at the end.
• Pumpkin
• Fresh pumpkin is really hard to slice because it is extremely hard. I recently learned that a pumpkin can be baked whole and when it is roasted, it is extremely easy to cut, the rind separates from the middle and the bones are easily separated with one stroke of a spoon. Only half a small pumpkin is needed for this recipe. I used a classic baby pumpkin.
• Before baking, it is obligatory to cut at the top so that it does not burst during baking. 3-4 deep notches are enough.
• Put the pumpkin on a baking tray, it is not necessary to spray with oil. Bake for about 25-30 minutes at 200 C degrees. Remove as soon as it darkens a little.
• Cut into slices, peel the crust and remove the middle with the bones.
• You can store a pumpkin prepared in this way in pieces for different recipes, just cover it and put it in the fridge.
• For this recipe it can only be mashed with a fork, or mixed finely.
• Biscuit for the cake - the basis
• In a large bowl, whisk the eggs with the sugar until foamy.
• Add yogurt and oil and mix a little more. Sift the flour and add along with the baking powder to the egg mixture. When adding flour, do not mix for too long.
• In the end you need to get a fine thick and smooth mixture. Divide the mixture into two parts.
• Pumpkin biscuit
• Add half the amount of crushed pumpkin, cinnamon and nutmeg to one part of the mixture that you separated. Mix well with a wooden spoon.
• Prepare orange. If you can’t find the finished orange then use red and yellow. Red is added dropwise to the yellow until a suitable orange is obtained. Then add to the pumpkin mixture.
• Pour the prepared orange mixture into a cake tin (I used 9 ") and bake at 160-170 C degrees for about 20-25 minutes. The oven should not be opened for the first 15 minutes.
• Make sure that the dough does not darken, it must be baked but it should have a uniform orange color.
• When done, take out and shake on the racks to let the dough cool immediately, and not to sweat.
• Chocolate biscuit
• Add melted chocolate, chocolate extract, vanilla sugar or extract, rum and black to the other part of the biscuit mixture. Mix well.
• Place in a cake tin and bake at 170 C for about 25-30 minutes.
• To me, the biscuit rose sharply and “bloomed” in the middle. If that happens to you don't worry :)
• Shake the biscuit upside down so that it sits on the distorted part for a while, so it will flatten out. The biscuit looks very dark due to the addition of black color, it is not toasted :)
• Preparation of cocoa biscuits
• Prepare basic biscuit No. 1. Add cocoa and ground walnuts.
• Put in a cake tin and bake at 170 C for 35-40 minutes. The time is a bit extended because a larger amount is baked at once. Always check if the biscuit is baked by piercing it in the middle with a long toothpick or a matchstick, if it is baked the toothpick will be dry.
• Remove the baked biscuit to cool. This biscuit is thicker so it is cut into two parts.
• When the biscuit has cooled, cut with a knife about 1-2 mm in half of the biscuit.
• Then cut the longer part of the thread, fold it in half and then place the thread in the notch you made with the knife and then pull both ends of the thread as if you were cutting with a saw and cut the biscuit. This is the easiest and fastest way to cut a biscuit that turns out perfect!
• Uniformly cut biscuit!
• Green cream
• Add flour to a bowl and mix with 1/2 cup of milk to be semolina-free.
• In a small saucepan add the rest of the milk and heat. Mix salt, sugar and vanilla extract or sugar and before the milk gets hot add the flour mixture and mix non-stop with a wooden spoon at low temperature. The mixture will slowly thicken.
• After 2-3 minutes of cooking, turn off and stir in the beaten egg yolks. Continue to mix until smooth. Add the green color and mix everything well. Allow to cool, but stir the mixture every few minutes to avoid crusting.
• Buttercream - white cream
• Mix the butter directly from the fridge (it must not be soft or melted!) Along with the powdered sugar and vanilla. Mix with an electric mixer until it becomes like a cream, add the cream while stirring constantly.
• Assembling the cake
• Use a larger plate or cake stand. Place a small round pan and turn upside down. If you are making a plain cake without a pumpkin shape decoration then you can skip this part with the round pan. This extraction is needed to make it easier to add icing cream while decorating the pumpkin.
• Then place the first piece of biscuit you cut on the pan.
• Add the green cream with a spoon.
• Coat the cream to a thickness of 1 cm, leave to cool slightly and harden before adding the pumpkin biscuit.
• When the cream on the first layer has hardened a bit, add the pumpkin biscuit, press lightly and coat with the rest of the green cream.
• Now add the top of the cocoa biscuit. Sprinkle with milk and coat with apricot jam.
• Add white cream over the layer of jam.
• And finally add the chocolate biscuit. You can now cut or shape the cake by cutting the lower part and the upper part a little, the middle part remains intact and thus you get the shape of a pumpkin. I unfortunately forgot to shape it a bit, so I had to make the pumpkin shape with icing cream. I forgot to take a picture with the final biscuit.
• Prepare icing cream. Orange can be added but is not required.
• Now coat the cake with the first layer of icing cream. This part does not need to be perfect, the main thing is that the cake is completely coated. I put extra cream around the middle of the cake to get a pumpkin shape :)
• Place the cake in the refrigerator to solidify the icing.
• Prepare the cream for the second layer. Be sure to add orange to this cream. Coat in a thicker layer, add extra cream where needed to get a pumpkin shape. Return to the refrigerator and allow the cream to harden slightly.
• Prepare a new icing cream and add orange, this is the final layer and the orange color needs to be a little stronger. Spread slowly, lifting the cream from the bottom towards the top of the cake with a knife. I used purchased icing cream to which I added orange color. 450 g of cream is needed for the outer layer.
• Here’s the finished cake coated with the last layer of cream. I later flattened the cream a bit to make it look smooth and then, with the help of a Chinese stick, I made indentations on the pumpkin.
• Cake cut :) super fine juicy and soft!
• Decorate the pumpkin with fondant; green leaves, stalk, eyes, nose, mouth ... Around the lower part I added a green wide ribbon over which I tied a black transparent and orange ribbon in greasy. Let the imagination do its thing!