Happy Harvest

This is the same Pumpkin Honey Cake from about a year ago. I persist in trying to decorate with cream cheese frosting, which is almost always way too soft to do anything by slather on, hence the messy basketwork and sloppy rope border. Giving the frosting some time in the fridge might have helped, but I'm also the world's greatest procrastinator. This cake was barely finished in time to take to my friends' annual harvest party.

The fondant pumpkins and gumpaste ghost proved to be the chief distractor from my less than stellar piping work. My other secret was that I took the cake to the party in a pink cake box. A friend's friend could not believe it didn't come from the store.

I had to hit two stores over two weeks before I could get a hold of orange food colouring. Halloween season is exactly the wrong time to be looking for that particular colour. I dusted the pumpkins in gold shimmer dust. Fabulous stuff! Here's another (grainy) look from a different angle.

What drew me to try the pumpkin honey cake recipe: if you ever watched the Smurfs, there's an episode where entire village gathers for Smurfberry honey cake, this giant confection that Baker Smurf pulls out on a wheel wagon that is some three Smurfs tall. I've been on the lookout for something-honey cake since!

The recipe made a lot of frosting. I had enough left over for the cake trimmings as well as a batch of quick pumpkin cupcakes (to try and use up the leftover pumpkin, which only comes in giant cans (>_<)).