Cakespy's Halloween: Cake Baked in a Pumpkin

By
Jessie Oleson Moore
Jessie Moore is a contributing writer at Serious Eats.
Jessie Oleson Moore is a freelance writer, illustrator, and founder of the award-winning website CakeSpy.com. She has published seven books, including CakeSpy Presents Sweet Treats for a Sugar-Filled Life (2011), The Secret Lives of Baked Goods (2013), and Baking with Steel: The Revolution New Approach to Perfect Pizza, Bread, and More (2017).
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Updated August 25, 2020
Cake Baked In A Pumpkin

The moisture of the pumpkin yields a cake that had a texture something like a baked pudding—very dense and flavorful. To keep things from getting too pumpkin-heavy, we like this recipe with carrot cake; the flavors and spices work beautifully with the pumpkin scent and flavor. It's even better when generously frosted and served with ice cream.

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It's been proven time and time again that stuff is better when it's baked inside of a cake. For example: cupcake-stuffed cupcakes, truffle-stuffed cupcakes, the entire website Bake it in a Cake.

But what happens when you do the reverse, and bake a cake inside something unexpected? Like a pumpkin?

The original idea here was to make mini cakes in cored-out small pumpkins, but the baking was irregular; baking a batch of cake in one large pumpkin yielded a far more delicious (and good-looking) result.

The moisture of the pumpkin yields a cake that had a texture something like a baked pudding—very dense and flavorful. To keep things from getting too pumpkin-heavy I tried this recipe with carrot cake; the flavors and spices worked beautifully with the pumpkin scent and flavor. It's even better when generously frosted and served with ice cream.

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