Gluten-free Pumpkin and Cinnamon Cake
Preheat the oven to 150°C (135°C fan)/300°F/Gas Mark 2. Line a 2lb loaf tin with baking parchment
Ingredients
For the cake
- 3 medium eggs, beaten
- 200ml sunflower oil
- 300g light muscovado sugar
- 375g grated peeled pumpkin (it’s easiest to do this using a food processor with a grater blade)
- The zest of 1 large orange
- 265g rice flour
- 1 tsp. GF baking powder
- 1 tsp. bicarbonate of soda
- ½ tsp. freshly grated nutmeg
- 2 tsp. ground cinnamon
- A pinch of salt
For the buttercream
- 75g soft, unsalted butter
- 150g icing sugar
- 1 tsp. ground cinnamon
- 1 tsp. vanilla extract
- A splash of milk if needed
For the soil
- 6 gluten-free digestive biscuits
- 1 level tbsp. cocoa, sifted
- 25g butter, melted
Instructions
- To make the cake, simply whisk together the sugar, oil and eggs thoroughly until the mixture is thick (a balloon whisk is fine, no need to plug in the electric hand whisk). Add the remaining ingredients and fold in until fully combined. Pour the mixture into your prepared tin and bake for 35 – 45 minutes, or until an inserted skewer comes out clean. Leave the cake to cool in its tin on top of a wire rack.
- To make the buttercream, simply whisk the butter until very soft and sift over half of the icing sugar. Whisk again to combine, before sifting the remaining icing sugar and cinnamon over the top. Add the vanilla and whisk again, adding a splash of milk to slacken the mixture if necessary. Spread the buttercream over the cold, turned out cake.
- To make the soil, simply bash or blitz the digestives and add the melted butter and cocoa and mix together. Cool and set aside until needed.
- Roll out approximately 500g of grass green sugarpaste (you can buy it ready-dyed or dye white sugarpaste yourself) and cover the cake, smoothing down the sides with your hands.
- Roll thin sausages of black sugarpaste and attach them all around the sides of the cake using cooled boiled water or vodka. Next, melt 5 squares of dark chocolate and paint a long rectangle along the middle of the cake with a pastry brush. Stick the soil to the melted chocolate to form a muddy bed.
- Mix together some black and white sugarpaste to make grey, and form it into the shape of a tombstone. Write or etch whatever you like on the stone. Break off two short pieces of raw gluten-free spaghetti (or you can use cocktail sticks) and insert them halfway into the base of the tombstone. Push the ends of the spaghetti into the cake to fix the tombstone in place.
- Make a small amount of flesh coloured sugarpaste (you can buy it ready-dyed or dye it yourself with a mix of mostly pink plus a tiny dash of yellow). Form it into the shape of a hand and wrist. You can use a cocktail stick to scratch on knuckles and make indentations for fingernails. Place another small piece of spaghetti into the wrist of your hand and push the other end of the spaghetti into the cake. Rub the hand with a few bits of the soil to make it look realistically grubby. Voila! Happy Halloween!
Gluten-free pumpkin and cinnamon gravestone cake by Victoria Glass
Victoria is a London based food writer, cake maker and sugarcraft tutor. She founded Victoria’s Cake Boutique in 2008 & her first book, Boutique Wedding Cakes, is out now. Her celebrity clients include Miranda Hart, Dave Gorman and Zach Braff. She’s cooked her way through the alphabet on her blog, Alphabet Soup. There she cooked & ate everything from artichokes to za’atar zebra (but wimped out of eating a live shrimp at Noma). She is currently writing her second book.