Spiced Pumpkin Pull-Apart Cupcake Cake {Recipe Time}

It’s that time of year again! Time for pumpkin spice everything!!! Woohoo!!

One of our top favorite goodies to make, besides the classic pumpkin bread, are Spiced Pumpkin Cupcakes. I used to make them topped with a Maple Butter Frosting until Rosie requested a Spiced Pumpkin Cake with a Brown Sugar Frosting for her birthday some years ago. {The link takes you to a post from 2010 on my first blog.} Rosie has requested it a couple times since and I’ve started making it for other occasions.

Recently, my dad asked me to bake something for my sister’s homecoming. Actually, what he asked for was “something with that really good maple frosting on it.” The “really good maple frosting” is actually a brown sugar frosting that tastes almost exactly like my maternal grandmother’s maple fudge. ::swoon:: That stuff is so addictive!

Oreo…cake? {Recipe time!}

Hi Everyone! I’ve been sitting here for…actually I’m not sure how long. My eyes hurt from looking at survey site after survey site trying to see if I can make a couple extra bucks while I’m already here. So I’ve closed all of those tabs (man, there really were a lot) and have finally made my way back to you. I’ve been trying to make my way back since my last post. It seems that when the kiddos are home on track-out I don’t get a lot of blogging done. And then when the kiddos track back in, well, a lot of time is spent catching up on housework, laundry, groceries, going around the lake, and so on.

But I’m here! Yay! And I realized that we’ve been hanging out for a couple months now, I have yet to post a recipe or cooking post or baking post! I can’t begin to explain how that happened. So I’ll just go ahead and correct that horrible oversight. 🙂

Oreo. Cake. Got your attention? Good. ‘Cause I promise, you won’t want to miss this deliciousness!

Messy? Yes. Delicious? Absolutely.

For Ladybug’s birthday, I made a 2-tiered cake. The bottom tier had two layers of this delicious chocolate Oreo cake with a creme layer in the middle. [The second tier was a white cake with a fluffy chocolate frosting in the middle.]

In preparation for the cake, I hit up a local spice shop that is absolutely wonderful: Savory Spice Shop…although since I don’t live in Raleigh anymore, it is a little bit of a drive for me. 😦 There I bought a box of black onyx cocoa powder.

 But what is black onyx cocoa powder? Why is it different from Hershey’s cocoa powder found in the grocery store? The black cocoa powder has been alkalized to the extreme which produces a dark, purplish-black cocoa with a lower fat percentage. The cocoa powder you buy in the grocery store has a higher fat percentage, and since it has more fat than the black cocoa powder, both are required in your baked good.

 Now it’s time to get to work! I do want to take a minute to say that the wonderful people at the Savory Spice Store shared a recipe with me for Almost Oh-ree-oh! cookies, and I adapted it for a cake.

Oreo Cake

All ingredients ready to go.

2 cups all-purpose flour

1/2 cup Dutch cocoa powder

1/2 cup black onyx cocoa powder

1/2 teaspoon baking soda

1 Tablespoon + 2 teaspoons baking powder

1/2 teaspoon salt

2 cups sugar

1/2 cup dark brown sugar

1 1/4 stick unsalted butter

1/2 cup vegetable shortening

1/4 cup vegetable oil

3/4 cup milk

2 large eggs

1/2 teaspoon vanilla

Preheat your oven to 375 degrees F. Grease and flour your cake pan; set aside.

In a large mixing bowl, whisk together the flour, both cocoas, baking soda, baking powder, salt and both sugars. Set the bowl aside.

Grab your mixer and, on low speed, cream together the butter and shortening. Once the butter/shortening mixture is shiny, add in the eggs; keep the mixer speed on low. With the mixer still going on low, slowly add in your flour mixture about one cup at a time. In between the cups of flour mixture, pour in some of the milk with the vanilla. About half way through, add in the vegetable oil. Be sure to scrape down the sides of the bowl occasionally.

Once all the ingredients are fully mixed together, pour the batter into the prepared pan.

Bake at 375 degrees for 10 minutes, then drop the temperature to 350 degrees and continue baking for 25 – 30 minutes, until a toothpick inserted in the middle comes out clean.

For the frosting between layers, I used The Pioneer Woman’s recipe for white frosting (that she used in between two layers of Devil’s Food Cake). It wasn’t as sweet as I was hoping, so I ended up adding more powdered sugar; it still wasn’t as sweet as I was hoping. However, since the frosting wasn’t overly sweet, it didn’t overshadow the flavor of the cakes. 

If you are looking for a sweeter filling, one more similar to that of the Oreo cookies, you could use this recipe (which came with the cookie recipe I got from the Savory Spice Store):

Creamy Filling

1/2 cup unsalted butter

1/2 cup vegetable shortening

4 cups powdered sugar, sifted

4 teaspoons vanilla extract

Mix the butter and the shortening on low speed in your mixer. Gradually beat in the sugar and the vanilla. When it is all combined, turn the mixer on high and beat for 2 to 3 minutes, until light and fluffy.

 

Have fun! And I hope you enjoy your cake as much as we enjoyed ours! 🙂