Professional Baker Teaches You How To Make PUMPKIN BUNDT CAKE!

Seriously, if Halloween had a signature flavor, it would have to be pumpkin. And my Halloween pumpkin bundt cake, well it is wickedly good. And don't worry, you haven't missed anything. Yes, I have a bundt cake in my hand, but I need two for this recipe. So I'm going to set this one aside to cool and start my second pumpkin bundt cake. So let me start off with my one cup of unsalted butter that I'm going to cream just to soften it up a bit, make it a little fluffy. I'm going to measure one and a half cups of sugar into my butter and a third of a cup of brown sugar. There we go. Now I'll beat this on medium speed until it's smooth and fluffy while I break my four eggs into a dish. Add my four eggs into my butter. Perfect. Now I'm all set to sift my dry ingredients. Three cups of all-purpose flour. My baking powder, two teaspoons. I need a teaspoon each of cinnamon and ginger. Half a teaspoon of nutmeg. Half a teaspoon of baking soda. And half a teaspoon of salt. I like this cake recipe because it is really quite simple. But at the heart of it, it's got to be the pumpkin. I'll measure out one and a half cups of pumpkin puree. So what I do now is I add my dry ingredients and then add the pumpkin. Now I add the pumpkin puree all at once. Now everything's combined. And now a little something extra because it's Halloween. One and a third cups of white chocolate chips. I'll just fold those in. A big cake recipe like this is best baked in a bun tin because the hole in the tin allows the heat from the oven to get into the center. It evenly cooks the cake. I've greased it and floured it. That way I know it will turn out of the pan nicely. And then I'll just dollop this in. What I love about a pumpkin bun cake is because of the pumpkin, it stays moist for ages. Now to bake a cake like this nicely, I first start by heating my oven to 375. And I pop the cake in and let it bake just for five minutes at that temperature. Then I reduce it to 325 and let it go for an hour. Here is my second bun cake out of the oven. And after I let the bun cakes cool in the tins for about half an hour, then I tip them out to cool completely. So now it's time for the frosting. And the style of frosting I'm making is an Italian buttercream. What I have here are six egg whites at room temperature. And I'm going to whip them up to a soft peak, adding a half a cup of sugar. Now it's time to cook some sugar. That's the secret behind an Italian meringue. Look at this, two measuring cups. It's Halloween, I'm getting crazy here. I've got a half a cup of water already in my pot. I'm going to add one and a half cups of sugar to that. I bring up to a full boil and I cook it to 240. Once the sugar hits 240, I take it and I add it to the whipping egg whites. The heat from the sugar cooks the egg whites. So when I add the butter, you've got a frosting that's kind of fluffy, yet creamy at the same time. You have to add two and a half cups of butter. Now for a little flavouring, a tablespoon of vanilla. Ooh, there it is. Just so fluffy and light. And now I need to tint the buttercream. So I'll start with some orange colouring. All right, and now for a little touch of the brown, just to add a little earthiness to the frosting itself. There, I think that's a good earthy pumpkin. And before I assemble, I want to set aside a little frosting, tint it brown, so I have it for the top of the pumpkin. And all I'm doing is adding a little bit of sifted cocoa powder. Lovely. Now it's pumpkin time. So the first thing I need to do is level off this pumpkin bundt cake. That way the two cakes stack nicely together. To fill the centre of the cake, I basically build a mini cake. Using cookie cutters, I cut out rounds from this top layer and stack them with frosting in between, and that fills in the centre. So now, before I put the top layer on, I'm going to spread on a level layer of frosting. And bring over my second cake and do the same thing. There we go. So I'm simply using my piping tip, piping up and over. And this is going to make it so much easier to spread. Wow, that is certainly a pumpkin. Now, I still have the stem to add. I'm going to use my cookie cutters again and I'll cut the base of the stem and I'll just spread some chocolate frosting and just cover this up. I take a fork and just mark those stem marks. There. Now, I've got green leaf fondant colour here. And cut out a big leaf. You can buy these leaf cutters at the same place you would get any cookie cutters. I do like to make these leaves ahead of time, but if I lay them flat, then they'll dry that way. So what I do, take a piece of tinfoil and give it a little crinkle. Then you can drape your leaves so they get a bit of a natural wave to them. You want to give it about at least two hours to let dry. After they've dried for a bit and they hold that lovely curled profile. Now that is a stunning party dessert. If you're setting out a dessert table, this will be the centrepiece.