Happy Halloween! 🎃👻🦇

What better way to celebrate Halloween than to make a cake shaped like a pumpkin? And then eat it!

Here we have a classic carrot cake, with a layer of cream cheese and white chocolate ganache. The cake was then covered in a mix of fondant and modelling chocolate, and then further covered with a layer of modelling chocolate that was then sculpted with the finer details of the pumpkin.

This is my second time working with modelling chocolate (here is the first time), and I think I’ve found the perfect ratio of the ingredients I use to make it the best hardness. And I learnt that, actually, modelling chocolate and fondant freeze very well. Just make sure it’s thawed at least overnight in the fridge before bringing it up to room temperature.

The pictures above are showing the process of mixing the fondant and modelling chocolate, with a ratio of about 3:1. In the recipe below I outline how I did that to get a really nice and smooth finish. I think I’d use this over regular fondant if possible. ?

The actual shaping of the cake, however, involved me completely winging it and getting very impatient! I looked at various photos and some were quite spherical, whereas others seemed almost like an ellipsoid. But, I managed it… kinda. ?

Pumpkin novelty cake

Ingredients for the cake
• Favourite cake (I used carrot cake ?)
• Favourite frosting (I used cream cheese and white chocolate)
• Marshmallow fondant

Ingredients for the modelling chocolate
• 454 g white chocolate
• 150 ml of golden syrup

Ingredients for the fondant decorating
• Ivory food colouring (for the pancake stack)
• Gel food colouring (orange and chocolate brown)
• Ethanol (food grade)
• Paint brushes
• Sugar-craft tools

Preparation
To combine the fondant and modelling chocolate mix:
I had 633 kg of leftover marshmallow fondant and 407 g of remaining modelling chocolate that I had thawed from the fridge. Just make sure you put them in the fridge for a day to thaw before bringing up to room temperature.
It would have taken a long time to warm and combine the two by hand. So I ended up splitting what I had into 3 portions and microwaving each in a small Pyrex bowl on the defrost setting for 10-20 seconds each. Then I combined each portion by hand before combining all portions in a large stainless-steel bowl.

Making modelling chocolate:
More modelling chocolate was made: I melted 454 g of white chocolate over a bain-marie (boiled the kettle, filled my medium saucepan ¼ of the way, popped the bowl on top, and put the hob on 2 and continuously stirred the chocolate).
Then took off the heat and added 150 ml of golden syrup and started mixing until it began to seize. Then dumped it onto cling film and left to cool.

To prepare the cake:
The cake was baked in 2x 6″ cake moulds, which were sandwiched with frosting and placed so that the bottom of the cakes met together in the centre. The cake was shaped with a knife into a rough pumpkin shape.
I crumb coated the cake with the frosting, popped it in the fridge for a bit, and added another layer.
I then rolled approximately half of the fondant/modelling chocolate mix on the work surface using cornflour to prevent sticking, and then covered the rounded cake with it; there was a little bit on the very bottom that I didn’t cover.
I used the modelling chocolate to make some kind of a numb and put little flattened bits of modelling chocolate all over the cake (as the fondant underneath just isn’t the texture to mould and shape). Then I used an iron on high het to softened the modelling chocolate, and used a knife and some modelling tools to smooth it all over. Don’t forget to press the nub into the top. Finally, I carved in the lines to make it look pumpkin-like.

The cake was then painted orange, and the num was painted ivory and chocolate brown.
I then used kitchen roll and a sprinkling of cornflour to dab all over the pumpkin to make it look more matte.

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