Hot Mess Pumpkin Cake or Why I am NOT a Food Blogger

 I have an affinity for all things pumpkin.  It starts in mid September and permeates all aspects of my life.  I have pumpkins both faux and real all over the house, and put pumpkin and pumpkin pie spice in everything possible.  So far either pumpkin or pumpkin pie spice or both land consistently in oatmeal, yogurt, coffee, lasagna, etc.  It was only a matter of time before I baked something pumpkiny.

 Please enjoy the ghetto paper plate presentation as I explain this hot mess of a cake to you.  

 I love cupcakes, mostly for the strong icing to cake ratio.  We had cupcakes at our wedding instead of a cake, and I make them all the time.  Probably too much for my Weight Watchers plan to have any hope of success.  I digress.  Jed, sweet man that he is, brought me home a surprise gift of a giant cupcake baking pan.  You fill two sides of the pan with cake batter and then after baking ice the whole thing and add filling to get one giant cupcake.  Genius, right?  Let's just say there is a bit of a learning curve to the giant cupcake.

 I added pumpkin to a box of cake mix, and the thing came out really heavy.  I mean beastly heavy.  I should have known that would happen, but I've done it with normal sized cupcakes with great success.  The cake was compacted and thick and heavy, but actually still tasted pretty good.  I iced it with my "best ever cream cheese icing recipe" (which is based off the Sprinkle's recipe) to try to cover up the ugly.  You can see how well that worked out.  Then I realized the fatal flaw of the giant cupcake.  It doesn't fit in my lovely vintage cake plate dome.  I was so frustrated by the end of the process that I just crammed the dome on top, figuring it couldn't make matters much worse.  The Pioneer Woman, I am not.

 The dome compressed the giant cupcake even further, and took off the top of the icing.  Did I eat that icing off the dome?  Yes ma'am, I did.

Here's to baking successes and failures, may they taste good even if they are ugly. 

Happy fall, y'all!