Charlie Brown’s friend Linus strongly believed that the Great Pumpkin would emerge on Halloween night, not unlike Santa Claus at Christmas. None of his friends really shared in his conviction (for good reason, since no Great Pumpkin appeared to him), but if you find that you get as into the Halloween spirit as Linus, you can easily make a great pumpkin appear in your kitchen with the help of Nordic Ware’s Great Pumpkin Pan. The heavy duty cast aluminum pan bakes one large, three-dimensional pumpkin-shaped cake that is the perfect representation of the fall and Halloween. The pan has two cavities, one for each half of the pumpkin. The pan holds about as much batter as a standard bundt pan (10 cups), so you can adapt any favorite bundt cake recipe to work with it, though a Pumpkin Pound Cake is highly recommended.
Once the cakes are baked, they can be stacked together and decorated. A little bit of green icing around the top can create a simple vine/leaf pattern for a realistic looking pumpkin, while black or brown icing can be used to put a jack o’ lantern face on the side for a spookier finished look. The cake is heavy enough to stay together while stacked if you don’t intend to move it much, but a little bit of icing between the hemispheres will help secure the pieces of the pumpkin so that you don’t have to worry about them coming apart.
What do you think?