Happy Halloween Peaches! My goodness this has been a busy month!! I have been making cakes like they are going out of style!! It seems that October is a big birthday month in my neck of the woods and I have had lots of practice and new cakes to make.
After the Lodge BBQ, I was tasked with making a German chocolate cake. Now, if you’re like me, when you think German chocolate cake, you think chocolate cake covered in that caramel-ly coconut-pecan goop, looking like your great aunt Ruth just whipped it up in her small country kitchen. Well, even though I do bake in my small country kitchen, I wanted to make this simple and delicious cake, with a more elegant and decorative twist. As I poured through online recipes for German chocolate cake, I tried to find one that spoke to me. I’m not a huge fan of the “naked” cakes, or unfrosted cakes, where you just have a filling and nothing on the outside. My fear is that the edges would get completely dried out, if it wasn’t consumed immediately. Then I thought of making the classic frosting into a tasty filling and frosting the outside of the cake with a chocolate buttercream. Genius! (she says with the laughter of a mad scientist..) I ended up doing just that. I had never made this kind of filling before, but I combined the techniques of a few different recipes and came up with some seriously tasty filling. Igor was eating it by the spoonfuls before I could even finish the cake! Since I couldn’t remember if I’ve ever actually tried a German chocolate cake before, I had to make a miniature size for my kitchen assistant aka my mom and myself to taste test. After a couple silly selfies, we dug into this amazing cake. One note I would love to make, is toasting the coconut and pecans before adding them to the filling is a definite must. It makes all the difference.
Over the next couple weeks I made a Neapolitan cake, a BMW cake and a couple apple carrot spice cakes, but my work of art, was an amazing pumpkin cake, that looks almost like a real pumpkin! This cake was such a challenge! I had the request from my girl, Cassie, because she loves Halloween. But she wanted it in the shape of the pumpkin, not just a round orange cake. So, I went with the classic Bundt cakes flipped on top of each other to make the rounded cake shape. Simple enough, right? Next with the frosting; firstly, let me just say, I added so much orange coloring, I thought I’d have to add a gallon. The frosting just wasn’t turning orange! So, I kept adding and slowly but surely, it got to that nice pumpkin color, and since I’m kind of a messy baker, I ended up looking like a pumpkin with all the frosting I wore! So, my next challenge was how to frost this giant cake ball and make it actually look real. I searched Google and Youtube for some tutorials and as always, used different tips and tricks to make my own pumpkin! One of the biggest parts to this was the molding and carving! I almost forgot it wasn’t a real pumpkin! I frosted the entire cake, then cooled it, then took it out to mold and shape it, then chill then mold and shape, over and over again. I wasn’t sure the perfectionist in me would ever finish this cake! Finally, I had it finished. I put the finishing touches on it and got it to my girl just in time for Halloween.
We just finished the night after trick or treating with our niece.
Time for bed for this old girl. Oh how times have changed. Sleep at 10 on Halloween. Until next time, Peaches. Sleep time, don’t let the ghouls and goblins bite! - PP
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