Friday, October 28, 2011

Jack-o-lantern Pumpkin Cake Tutorial

So, earlier in the week I promised that I would show everyone how I did the jack-o-lantern cake that I made for my nephew's first birthday. Well, today is your lucky day, just in time for Halloween. This cake was really challenging to figure out. First, off how do you make a cake hallow, and light up like a jack-o-lantern? The cake would not be stable enough  to hold it shape if it was carved, and then to have a face carved outof it...forget it. So my husband, and I started thinking about different options for this cake (believe we me we had quite a few ideas). He finally came up with the idea of using the pumpkins I had purchased from Michael's (our local craft store) as the face of the pumpkins. So, that is exactly what we did!

All three pumpkins carved out! I just free handed the carvings, but you could do whatever you want. It is very similar to carving a real pumpkin, and I used the same tools. I wanted the pumpkin faces to be happy since this was a first birthday cake.
The my husband took a hole saw and drilled the tops, and bottoms out of all the pumpkins, so they could be placed on the stand.

This gives you an idea of what it will look like finished.
Since I only needed about 35 servings, we decided to leave the top two pumpkins in tact, and just decorate them with fondant. I covered each cake in fondant by piecing together two large strips one for the front, and one for the back, and then hiding the seam. Then, I took an exacto knife, and cut out the cravings I had already done.

They looked pretty good at that point! Then I just had to paint them orange, and let them dry.
The bottom pumpkin was a little more challenging. My husband cut the front part of the pumpkin off, so that we had only the face left. Then he took the cake, and carved it to match the size of the pumpkin. I then, buttercreamed the inside of the cake that would show through when the cake was lit up. Then I again, covered it in fondant, and painted it. In order to light the pumpkin we had to cut a hole in the side of the cake to insert the battery operated tea lights. I covered the hole with a well placed leaf. The top two pumpkins we lit up by inserting the tea lights through the hole in the bottom, if they were cake though we would have had to do the same thing.



All done, and pretty impressive since the guests didn't know it was the actual cake!
I think it looks awesome lit up!
Hope you all enjoyed this little tutorial! Have a very Happy Halloween!

1 comment:

Anonymous said...

This is very cool! Thanks for showing us!