A Bundt Pan Is All You Need For The Perfect Pumpkin-Shaped Cake

As temperatures outside slowly switch from sweltering to autumnally pleasant, you may find yourself contemplating which meals and desserts you'd like to make once fall finally arrives. While many of us enjoy warm and comforting foods during the season (like bowls of slow cooker beef stew and mulled wine, for example), nothing is more synonymous with autumn than pumpkin — or better yet, a classic pumpkin cake. Yet, if you've made a traditional pumpkin cake more than once, you might be looking for a fun and exciting way to upgrade this seasonal dessert. Luckily, all you need is a Bundt pan for a fun and whimsical take on this fall treat. 

For the uninitiated, Bundt pans are typically round with a centralized hollow spear, a shape that helps form cakes into decorative rings. They often have ridges or designs and are ideal for dense, structurally sound confections like pound or snacking cakes.

Like Bundt pans, whole pumpkins, too, often have ridges along their skin, so what better way to celebrate the fall season than by using a Bundt pan to make a pumpkin-shaped cake? With a few simple steps, your next pumpkin cake can look like a real orange squash picked fresh from the dirt.

Regardless of whether or not your pumpkin cake batter is homemade or straight from a box, it's likely you'll need extra batter in order to make this fun, seasonal dessert. For the pre-mix variety you can purchase at your local supermarket, it's recommended that you buy two boxes, and make one right after the other, from mixing bowl to oven. If you're making a homemade pumpkin cake, you may need to increase the ingredients by half at minimum (or, you guessed it, even double them) so you have enough batter for two Bundt pans. (Only have one Bundt pan? No worries: Bake one cake and then a second cake after wiping out the pan accordingly.)

After both pumpkin cakes have cooled, you may need to use a serrated knife to even out the flat sides of your cakes so they can sit evenly on top of one another. Before stacking the cakes together, prepare your favorite icing (or, as we'd recommend, a generous amount of traditional American buttercream frosting) and layer some on the straight edge of one Bundt cake. Place the second cake on top, bottom side up, and there you have it: one beautiful pumpkin-shaped layer cake. 

Now that you know the ropes for making a Bundt pan-based seasonal pumpkin cake, add a few finishing touches to make it a real showstopper. The first and easiest way to do this is by adding orange food dye to the majority of the frosting you plan to use and applying it to your pumpkin-shaped cake. If you want your pumpkin cake to mimic the real thing as much as possible, you can create a stem as a finishing touch. Take a sugar cone and cover it by using a smaller batch of frosting with some green food dye mixed in. This sugar cone stem can be placed upside down, right in the middle of your cake.

After you master these frosting techniques, feel free to think outside the box. If you plan on serving up your pumpkin cake for a party, you can remove a slice and add a bunch of your favorite Halloween- or fall-inspired candy to make this confection look like it's exploding with yummy seasonal treats. Candy corn or mini chocolate bars are both festive and tasty options, but don't feel limited to either one; now that you've learned one of the many creative ways to utilize your Bundt pan, you can adorn your perfectly shaped pumpkin cake however you'd like.