Pumpkin Cake w/ Burnt Orange Silk Meringue Buttercream (also My 20th Wedding Anniversary Cake)

Rose' Heavenly Cakes, Page 125: Pumpkin Cake w/ Burnt Orange Silk Meringue Buttercream

Halloween is not a major event for us here in Singapore. So instead of baking this cake in pumpkin mold and decorate it as a pumpkin, i decided to decorate it as my 20th wedding anniversary cake since i'm celebrating my anniversary this month. Hence no pumpkin-shaped cake but fondant covered cake. :) I made the wedding couple topper on my own too. It's my first time doing it and i'm quite happy with the results. I did an earlier bride topper when i was having a terrible backache and the bride turned out hunchback too!! I decided to re-do and used Lorraine McKay's (aka Aine2) tutorial - Extra Icing on the Cake and i'm quite happy with the results even though they are not perfect, i think they are passable! :D I'm a huge fan of Lorraine's works and i think she's one of the best in figures modeling. Yup, i "follow" Lorraine everywhere, on blogger, youtube, twitter, facebook, flickr & her membership club..i sound like a stalker..LOL!

I think i better explain why i placed the groom topper on the side of the cake..... it's all because i expected the cake to be bigger! I thought 10 cups would yield a lot when in fact it didn't! LOL! So last min, i had to change baking pan into a smaller one & also my design as well. No choice but to put the groom topper on the side otherwise i think the cake would look too crowded. I was suppose to make the groom kneel down holding a gift/flower. But in the end the black sugarpaste was too soft (maybe i put too much black food gel to get the dark black color) and it kept breaking at the knee & elbow...thus the groom with stiff arms on the side and just standing. LOL!

Cake: Pumpkin cake tasted better than i thought it would be. It's soft, moist and yummy even on its own. I bought walnut oil just for this cake and now i am not sure what i am going to do with the rest of the walnut oil..lol! The strange thing is i think i'm beginning to like walnuts..i wonder if it is because i keep baking with walnuts as i've never baked anything with walnuts before joining HCB.

Burnt Orange Silk Meringue Buttercream: This buttercream is NO good during hot weather! Weather here is about 30c and it's hot & humid. I made the buttercream the day earlier (since it has 2 pages of instructions!). The moment the buttercream hits to a higher temperature, the oil begins to separate and it is quite an ugly sight and i have to constantly put the cream back into the fridge for it to stay 'cool'. Plus I find it way too troublesome. Making sugar syrup in such small quantity is rather difficult, it's not easy to take the sugar temperature as quantity too little even my tiniest pan (it's part of mini series pans - so believe me when i said it is tiny) and my candy thermometer can't give accurate reading - plus my stupid instant read thermometer isn't very instant read either - i had to wait for quite a while for a reading! Because of the not very stable buttercream, you can see my cake caving in the centre and the fondant sliding in with a fold right in the centre around the cake. :(

Overall: Surprisingly good for pumpkin cake imo. My daughter enjoyed this cake the most, she ate 2 huge slices! I like this cake even better the next day after it is being refrigerated, the flavor seems more intense and goes really well with the cold buttercream imo. But if you ask me, of course chocolate cake still top my list! Since i'm not a fan of pumpkin i doubt i will ever make this again though, unless special requests or for someone who really loves pumpkin.

Please do check out the other HCB bakers listed on my sidebar to see how their pumpkin cake turned out. :D