There's no trick to making these Halloween treats – it’s just ghoulishly good fun! Rammed full of sensational seasonal spices, enticing Autumnal ingredients and a few spooktacular surprises, these creepy crowd-pleasers will have adults and kids alike screaming in delight. Visit Katie Pix on YouTube for more frightfully good recipes!

Spiced Pumpkin Piñata Cake with Orange Buttercream

Warmly spiced seasonal pumpkin cake with a juicy orange buttercream frosting. This clever little recipe stacks two Bundt cakes for the perfect pumpkin shape. Decorate with a face and fill with a trick or treat of your choice!

FOR THE CAKE

For this recipe, you will need…
2 x Bundt tins
cooking spray
electric whisk
palette knife

Ingredients

600g soft light brown sugar
400ml sunflower oil
2 vanilla pod, seeds of
6 large free range eggs
800g plain flour
2 heaped tsp bicarbonate of soda
4 heaped tsp Schwartz Cinnamon Powder
2 tsp Schwartz Ground Nutmeg
2 tsp Schwartz Sea Salt
½ tsp Schwartz Ground Cloves
2 x 425g tin of Pumpkin Puree

Method

Preheat oven to 180°C/ 350°F/Gas Mark 4.

In a large mixing bowl, combine your soft brown sugar and sunflower oil until blended. Split your vanilla pod in half and scrape out the seeds, adding to your wet mix.

Add the eggs, one at a time, beating well after each addition.

In a separate bowl, combine the plain flour, bicarbonate of soda, Schwartz Cinnamon Powder, Schwartz Ground Nutmeg, Schwartz Sea Salt and Schwartz Ground Cloves. Add your dry mix to the egg mixture bit by bit, alternating with your pumpkin puree, also a spoonful at a time, beating well after each addition.

Share the mixture between two greased Bundt tins. Bake for 1 hour 15 minutes or until a skewer inserted in the centre comes out clean. Remove from the oven and leave to cool in the tin for 10 minutes before inverting onto a wire rack to cool completely.

FOR THE ICING

Ingredients

300g unsalted butter, room temperature
600g icing sugar, sifted
2 tsp Schwartz Cinnamon Powder
1 tsp Schwartz Ground Ginger
3 oranges, zest of
½ freshly squeezed orange, juice of
orange food gel

Beat your butter with an electric whisk until pale and fluffy. Spoon by spoon, add your icing sugar until fully combined. Then let’s go in with some flavour! Evenly mix through the Schwartz Cinnamon Powder and Schwartz Ground Ginger. Combine your food colouring with the orange zest and juice and fold through your mix (this should help it distribute evenly through your cake mix).

Once your cakes have cooled, level out the tops of each; leaving one side curved from the Bundt tins and the other flat. Place one of your cakes curved side down and take the opportunity to fill the hole with a trick or treat (sweeties or spiders!). With the offcuts of your cake and a generous layer buttercream, seal the hole, sandwiching the flat side of each cake together. You should be left with a pumpkin-like shaped cake.

Give your cake a fine layer of the buttercream icing to seal in the crumbs (this is known as a crumb coat) and refrigerate for at least 30 minutes. Once it’s firmed up, finish with a generous layer of buttercream all over your pumpkin cake, smoothing it with a palette knife and following the natural ridges of the Bundt shape.

Complete your Halloween delight with a stalk and spooky features using ready-made royal icing in black and brown, or leave natural as a perfect autumnal centre piece!