Christelle Huet-Gomez’s magic Halloween cake is a bite of something spook-tacular
Ingredients
• 300g pumpkin flesh, peeled and chopped into 5 cm squares
• 1 vanilla pod
• 400ml milk
• 4 eggs, separated
• 75g caster sugar
• 50g honey
• 125g butter
• 115g plain flour
• pinch salt
• 2 teaspoons french four-spice mix, (pepper, cloves, nutmeg and ginger)
Equipment:
• 24 cm cake tin, silicone or greased with butter and lined with baking parchment
Method
1 Steam the pumpkin cubes for around 30 minutes. Purée with an electric hand blender.
2 Meanwhile, preheat the oven to 150°C.
3 Split the vanilla pod down the middle and scrape out the seeds with the blade of a knife. Heat the milk with the vanilla seeds and the pod. Bring to the boil, then immediately remove from the heat and leave to infuse.
4 Beat the egg yolks with the sugar until the mixture whitens. Then add the honey. Melt the butter and pour it into the mixture. Add the puréed pumpkin, flour, salt and four-spice.
5 Remove the vanilla pod and pour in the milk little by little, whisking constantly.
Beat the egg whites until stiff and, using a whisk, gently incorporate them into the batter. 6 Pour the batter into the cake tin and smooth the surface with the blade of a knife. Bake in the oven for 50 minutes.
7 When the cake comes out of the oven it will wobble slightly.
8 Before turning it out, leave it to set in the fridge for at least 2 hours. Serve chilled.
Recipe extracted from Christelle Huet-Gomez, extracted from Magic Cakes. Photography by Valéry Guédes © Hardie Grant
