Pumpkin ALL the Things

Every year, I do a bunch of pumpkin items in Sept/Oct/Nov, ranging from pumpkin/pumpkin spice foods and products, to crafts, to art… this year, we had a dessert contest at our Halloween party at work and I decided to try to go all out. It took me the whole week to do, but I think it was worth it (I won second place, one of the guy’s wives was a professional cake decorator and he brought her cake in, so I feel pretty good about myself losing to that!).

I cheat-made fondant (marshmallow fondant) which was still a right mess and took a lot of kneading, but at least had fewer ingredients.

I had a pumpkin cake mold, I make pumpkin flavored cupcakes and put them together and sealed them in fondant. This was not the best idea, I think the pumpkin cake was too moist and didn’t handle the fondant well - plus I did make them first so they sat in the fridge all week.

I covered the bottom later of the cake in fondant, and make poured chocolate letters for the text. (You can see the letter mold in the background of this picture)

I didn’t have enough fondant for the top, so I frosted it with a layer of buttercream, then tinted the buttercream green and piped on the “grass”.

Then I popped some candy corn pumpkins on it, put the pumpkins on top, and it was done!

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This cake is spectacular! Love all the pumpkins, and your lettering looks flawless. Professional cake decorators should have been banned from participating, IMO. You are the winner in my eyes.

:star_struck:

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Admire your ingenuity when you didn’t have enough fondant! The grass is a nice texture for the smoothness of the fondant.

Were the cakes eaten? Was yours all pumpkin inside? I love everything pumpkin as well…

You should be so proud of your cake!

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The bottom later was chocolate and the top was white cake. And yes, they were eaten! People said they tasted good, though aside from the pumpkin cupcakes they were box mixes. Made from scratch frosting, but I’m good with just using a box for the cake!

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This is adorable and you should have won, if the winner didn’t decorate the cake himself, he shouldn’t have been allowed to enter the contest.

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Wow! This is awesome!! Love that the pumpkins on top are made of cake!

This is outright adorable! It has a great amount of detail, but not so much that it doesn’t look like a cake. Well done!

You went all out and it looks amazing! I don’t think the winning cake should have been allowed. An employee didn’t make it, his wife did. You were robbed!!!

Beautifully done.

I love this cake! I can’t believe you didn’t win. It’s fabulous.

:snowflake: :sparkles: Congratulations! This fantastic project has brightened our winter days as a feature this week! :sparkles: :snowflake:

I really like the shape and color of the pumpkins. They look like miniaturized real pumpkins and the color is set off really nicely by the green of the grass!