It's the Great Pumpkin Cake...

...Charlie Brown! My daughter is 16 months old, so she doesn't grasp the idea of holidays just yet. But that's not going to stop me from diving right in and continuing traditions that I grew up with, or starting new ones that I know she will love. 

It's the Great Pumpkin, Charlie Brown is a TV special from 1966 and book that I plan to show her this Halloween season and for many years to come. We have a large, inflatable pumpkin and ghost in our front yard that she loves to turn on every afternoon and watch it inflate. She also loves to give the "ghostie" a high five and will touch the pumpkin already placed on our doorstep when prompted.

In this posting, I'm sharing with you a pumpkin cake I made recently. In years to come, I hope to make it for her, having it appear before or after we watch the special. With Pinterest, it's hard, if not impossible, to come up with something new. One search of "pumpkin cake" yields pages of results. The pumpkin shape is easily created by putting two bundt cakes together, but almost every posting creates the stem in a different way. 

Many cakes I found involved making the stem out of frosted green mini-muffins pilled in the center, or by using an inverted ice cream cone. I could tell that they had Pinterest-fail written all over them, especially once I attempted them. Instead, I followed one that called for the top of a small pumpkin with the stem, as the stem.

It was easy, and I used the body of the pumpkin to serve the ranch dressing for the vegetable plate in. If you don't know already, serving vegetables cancels out any calories that come with eating cake.

The cake was super moist, but I sure had a lot of it leftover. If you're not going to be feeding a small army, I would cut the recipe I used in half and use smaller bundt cake molds. Enjoy, and please check out the other blogs in this blog-hop for craft, recipe, DIY or printables based on other kid's Halloween books! 

Halloween Pumpkin Cake

Ingredients

• For the cake:
• 2 boxes yellow cake mix 
• 1 (30 oz/425 g) can pumpkin
• 2 eggs
• 1/2 cup (60 ML) vegetable oil
• 4 teaspoons pumpkin pie spice
• 2 teaspoons cinnamon

Instructions

1. For the cake -
2. Preheat oven to 350°F. Grease two bundt pans. Set aside.
3. In large bowl, place all cake ingredients. With an electric mixer on low, beat until ingredients are combined. Turn speed up to medium and beat for 1 1/2 minutes. Pour the batter in equal amounts into prepared bundt pans. Bake cakes for 35-45 minutes, or until a toothpick inserted into middle of cake comes out clean. Let cakes cool completely.

Original recipe found over at Mom Loves Baking. She has a great recipe for the frosting, but in the interest of time I purchased whipped cream cheese frosting and added red and yellow food coloring.

This post is part of the Kid's Halloween Books Blog Hop hosted by Beyond Mommying. Check out all the other great posts and follow along with #HalloweenKidsHop.