Our Terry's Chocolate Orange Pumpkin Shaped Cake is a showstopping centrepiece treat for any Halloween party.
Step by step guide showing you how to make a Chocolate cake cooked in a large doughnut cake mould, to form a rounded shape.
With a Terry's Chocolate Orange added in the middle before being decorated into a pumpkin.
Decorated with orange icing, chocolate shaped for eyes, mouth and stalk and finally a fountain of terry chocolate mini's coming out the top of the pumpkin.
Halloween is just around the corner so time for Kay to dust of her broomstick, we have pulled the cauldron out and decided to treat the kids this time.
In this case, we called in the help of my ever so creative sister Rebecca. Not only does she love to make cakes, but also is brilliant at it.
She should be doing it professionally; a wasted talent!
How to make a Halloween Pumpkin Shaped Cake at home?
Check out the step by step slideshow video to see what is involved in making this cake.
Scroll down to the recipe for full ingredients and how to, or carry on reading below for more advice.
We have broken this post into 2 separate recipe cards.
Jump to RecipeOne for the chocolate cake and the other for the decoration steps.
If you wanted you could just buy a ready-made chocolate sponge cake to give you a head start and jump straight to the decoration?
Step 1- Making a Pumpkin Chocolate Sponge Cake.
We used a large doughnut cake ring to give us a rounded pumpkin shape chocolate sponge ready to be decorated. The best part about it is the Terry's Chocolate Orange slots in perfectly!
How to make a simple homemade chocolate sponge mix?
Make a simple homemade chocolate cake mix using self raising flour, eggs, caster sugar, butter, baking powder and cocoa powder.
Pour this mixture into the 2 large doughnut ring cake moulds, bake in oven until risen and springy to touch.
Leave to cool before turning out cake.
You could use 2 bundt pans instead to make a taller version (you will need to double up the ingredients though)
Equipment that helped us make a pumpkin shape cake.
Step 1 - Pumpkin Shaped Chocolate Cake Sponge
Equipment
Ingredients
- 3 Large Eggs
- 175 grams Self Raising flour
- 175 grams Caster sugar
- 175 gram softened butter
- 1 ½ tsp Baking Powder
- 40 grams Cocoa Powder
- 4 Tbsp Boiling Water
Instructions
- Pre-heat the oven at 180°CPlace the eggs, flour,caster sugar, butter and baking powder in a large whisking bowl and whisk until nice and smooth
- Place the cocoa powder into a separate bowl, slowly start adding the boiling water stir until its become a stiff paste.
- Place paste into the cake mixture and whisk until smooth.
- Line both of the doughnut moulds with butter to help remove cake easier after cooking.Place the cake mixture into both doughnut moulds equally, if you only have one mould do one at a time.
- Place into the oven for 20-25 mins or until springy to touch.Remove from oven and leave to cool before moving on to step 2.
Nutrition
Can I use store bought cake instead?
If you opted to get a store-bought chocolate sponge cake, you just saved yourself 45 minutes! You may need to buy 2 simple sponge cakes.
Carve some cake away to make it more rounded and add a hole in the middle, big enough to put the Terry's Chocolate Orange inside!
Step 2 - Decorating Cake as a Pumpkin for Halloween.
Finally, the fun begins, see the steps in the recipe card below for how to decorate your chocolate cake into a pumpkin.
Step 2 Decorating Pumpkin Cake
Equipment
Ingredients
- 120 grams unsalted butter We use Stork.
- 250 grams icing sugar
- 1 tsp vanilla extract
- 500 grams White Fondant ready to roll
- 1 tube orange food gel colouring to colour icing
- 300 grams chocolate cake covering For shaping pumpkin eyes, mouth and stalk
- 157 gram Terry's Chocolate Orange milk chocolate box
- 125 gram Terry's Chocolate Orange Mini's bag
Instructions
- Once cooled, remove the two cake bases from the moulds.
- Insert a full terry's chocolate orange inside the hole of one of the bases.
- Place the butter in the whisking bowl and whisk until creamy, start to add the icing sugar in small batches and keep on beating until the mixture is light and creamy.
- Add the vanilla extract and give it one last whisk
- Start to place the cream filling inside the doughnut ring.
- Once the inside of the ring is filled with buttercream, place the other base on top closing it together to create a pumpkin shape
- With the remaining buttercream start to cover the cake all over. Until you cant see the chocolate base any more. Place in the fridge to keep cool. Keep any leftover buttercream in the fridge for later too.
- Meanwhile, start to melt your chocolate cake covering in a glass bowl over boiling water whilst stirring. When fully melted, pour ½ the mix onto parchment paper and smooth it out flat and place in the fridge to cool.Use the other half of melted chocolate to make the stalk. Create a cone out of parchment paper and pour a good amount in, place this in the fridge to cool.
- Place the fondant on a flat surface and squirt some orange gel colouring inside and start to knead the fondant and keep on repeating this until the fondant is a good orange colour for the pumpkin.
- Start to roll out fondant (using icing sugar to prevent sticking) roll out until it will fully cover the cake.
- When ready place the fondant over the cake, cutting away excess fondant from the edges. Use a fondant smoothing tool to remove any lumps or air pockets.Keep excess fondant for making the top stalk of the pumpkin
- Use a Sharp knife to cut out a star shape on the top of the pumpkin, where the stalk would be.
- Place the terry's chocolate orange mini's on top of the pumpkin using buttercream to stick to side of the cake. Making an overflow effect of chocolate coming out of the cake.
- With the remaining fondant and chocolate stalk you can now make your star shape pumpkin lid to put next to cake when finished.
- We used a Sharp knife to rough up the chocolate stalk making it look more rustic.
- Using a ball tool make the indentations around the cake similar to a pumpkin.
- Take the cooled moulded chocolate out of the fridge and with a sharp knife start to create your desired face shapes for the cake.
- Using some leftover buttercream these can be stuck onto the face.
- Step back take a picture before you let the kids and adults have a feast on it! All that hard work eaten in 10 minutes!
Nutrition
Using Chocolate to create decorations?
First prepare your chocolate decorations. Using chocolate cake covering, melt it down and spread ½ onto parchment paper.
Make a cone shape with the parchment paper to pour the other half in for the stalk. We didn't get the photo for this but you can see how to make a cone on this youtube tutorial.
Refrigerate whilst you work on the rest of the cake.
How to make a easy butter icing?
Simply whisk the butter in a mixer (or hand mixer) until softened then add icing sugar and finally vanilla extract continue mixing until light and creamy.
Use this icing to build up the cake. First add the Terry Chocolate Orange in the middle of the bottom layer, then icing, then next cake layer.
Followed by a coating all over of butter icing.
How to create orange fondant icing for Pumpkin Shaped Cake?
Simply buy some ready made white fondant and some orange food colouring strong gel. Knead the fondant to soften and keep adding orange gel until the right colour.
Sprinkle icing sugar down and roll out using a rolling pin, until bigger than the sponge.
Transfer rolled fondant onto the cake, cut away the excess icing (saving for later).
Use a fondant smoothing tool to smooth out any lumps or air pockets. Cut out a star shape from the top and remove fondant.
Now add Terry's chocolate orange mini's into the hole, use the leftover butter icing to glue the mini's down the side of the pumpkin.
Use a ball tool to add some contour lines up your pumpkin shaped cake.
Cut out triangle eyes and nose and a jagged mouth into the chocolate you prepared earlier and use the butter icing to stick them on to the pumpkin cake face.
Use the left over fondant to create a star shaped lid and the rough up the chocolate cone with a sharp knife to use as the stalk.
There you go, Pumpkin Shaped Cake, ready to display on your halloween themed table!
Equipment that helped us decorate our Pumpkin Shaped Cake.
We spent a whole day creating this Terry's Chocolate Orange Pumpkin Cake, of course, it was worth it, so enjoyable we are already thinking up ideas for the next cake!
Check out the inside of the cake!
The whole process of making this Pumpkin Shaped Cake was fun, furthermore, you must agree the end result is fantastic!
All our kids loved this cake; it put a big smile on there faces.
For another perfect addition to your table, check out our Snake Breadsticks and Shortbread Spider Biscuits.
It's not Terry's its mine!
my wife made this cake with her nieces last night and they had so much fun making it. And I had fun eating it!!
Wow, this is a lot of work but I am sure it's worth it. It's so cute...
Wow! What a beautiful cake and perfect for Halloween! It looks almost too pretty to eat! Well done!
This is so cute and I love the chocolate and orange combination!
OMG. DON'T TAP IT WHACK IT STRAIGHT INTO MY BELLY. So good what a treat or could it be a trick for the eyes this beautiful yummy Halloween cake idea great work guys keep it up 👍👍👍👍👍🎃🎃🎃🎃🦇🦇🦇🦇
Hi Chris
Love the comment, you can't beat Terry's chocolate orange especially in a cake, Mmmmmm
Remember it's not Terrys it mine LOL
Many Thanks
Luke and Kay
Wow what a good idea for a Halloween cake! My children had so much fun making this and it tasted delicious! Thank you Flawless!
This is such a great cake for a Halloween Party. It must have been fun to make!
Great fun, thanks Rosemary!
What a fun idea! I’m sure children love making and eating this one. I love chocolate orange so now fancying it!
It is my favourite chocolate, kids had friends over to help eat it!
Such a nice cake and perfect idea for upcoming Halloween. It looks like a real pumpkin.
Hi Jelena,
Thank you for your kind words, we had a fantastic time making it.