Genius Hour 1.4: A Challenging Pumpkin

    ♡This week I decided to challenge myself to make a pumpkin cake. At first I was struggling with if I should make an actual pumpkin or just little pumpkin decorations. After discussing with my mom about it for an hour, I decided to make an actual pumpkin. My next step was deciding how I was gonna accomplish it.I looked at pictures on the internet and picked my favorite one. Honestly looking at a single picture helps me a lot and it gives me inspiration.  

    My first plan was to make a two tiered cake with my six inch pans and then carve the cake to make it look like a pumpkin. However, when I got to the store I saw this perfect little bundt cake pan. I then decided to try that instead, as it had that pumpkin shape and would be easier. Another thing I encountered at the store is that they had no orange fondant! I then came up with the plan to dye white fondant with food coloring.                                                              

    After I got home, I got to work cooking the yellow cake. After it was done cooking, I put it in the freezer for an hour, so it would be easier to carve the bundt cake on the sides, so it wasn't such a sharp edge and would be a more smooth shape. While the cake was cooling, I started on dying the fondant. This was absolutely the most challenging and time consuming part. The food coloring had issues really coloring the fondant. It took about a whole hour and a whole bottle of food coloring to mix it enough to get a vibrant orange. I then decided to make the stem. To be honest, I winged this part by taking a little of the orange fondant and mixing black fondant with it. It actually turned out amazing and looked like a real stem. I then shaped the stem by rolling it out, twisting the end, and then flattening the base. Then I rolled out the fondant enough to cover the cake.                          

    I then carved the cake to make it smooth. I was honestly really scared at this point, because it looked like it was losing that pumpkin shape, but I kept going and covered it in lemon frosting. I then gently put the fondant over the cake and smoothed it till it was a circle. The most difficult part of this was cutting the excess fondant off the end and tucking it to make it look like a real pumpkin. I messed up on some parts, but I believe I did pretty good for the most part. After finishing the fondant, I took my fondant tool with a ball on the end and carefully pushed into the pumpkin where I could feel the bundt cake lines. This allowed for the lines in the pumpkin to appear. Once that was done I attached the stem to the top of the pumpkin and took cocoa powder and carefully put it in the lines of the pumpkin to give it more definition.                                                                                            

    Overall this has been my favorite cake so far. I am so proud of how it turned out! Every week I have surprised myself with how well my cakes have turned out. I have followed my action plan perfectly and next week I will be attempting a Halloween cake!