Pumpkin Spice Cake

What better way to kick off fall than with a pumpkin spice cake? I used the cake recipe here to make the cake base (I know – I used a box mix. I’m a cheater), then added in chocolate chips so my husband would eat it.

For the frosting, I used Best Buttercream Frosting.

Warning: This cake was super crumbly. I did a crumb coat, but still got tons of crumbs in my icing. I finally gave in and left them there – we’re calling this a “rustic look”. That’s code for “I made a mistake, but I like it that way.” That’s why the cake doesn’t have smooth edges either. I used a spatula to swirl the buttercream from bottom to top (great place to use the turntable I got for my birthday!).

The little pumpkins were a blast to make. I saw a tutorial on molded buttercream a long while ago, and have been wanting to try it ever since. Apparently, you just add powdered sugar to normal buttercream until you get what amounts to icing Play-Doh. Fun to play with and diabetes-level sweet.

To make the pumpkins, I used a couple scoops of orange Wilton gel coloring, and one scoop of brown. I recommend mixing the colors in before adding the extra powdered sugar, because afterwards it’s hard to stir the color in evenly (I made this mistake on the green icing for the stems). Then, I made smooth round balls and squashed the top and bottom slightly. The lines were made by pressing a toothpick lengthwise down the side of the ball.

On the stems, I used a couple scoops of green Wilton gel coloring and one scoop of brown. Then I rolled small cones and pressed them into the tops of the pumpkin bases. One of them accidentally went crooked on me, but I thought it looked more pumpkin-y, so I made the rest crooked to match.

Voila! A quick, easy and cute cake to welcome in the cooler weather 🙂