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Chocolate Pumpkin Cake

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This chocolate pumpkin cake is rich and packed with flavor. Chocolate cake batter is swirled throughout the pumpkin cake batter. It’s frosted with fluffy and light cream cheese chocolate frosting. 

Ingredients

Scale

For the cake

  • 2 cups all purpose flour
  • 2 teaspoons baking powder
  • 1 teaspoon baking soda
  • 1.5 teaspoons ground cinnamon*
  • 1/2 teaspoon nutmeg*
  • pinch of salt
  • 4 eggs
  • 1 cup granulated sugar
  • 1/2 cup brown sugar
  • 1 cup vegetable oil
  • 2 teaspoons vanilla extract
  • 15 oz. pure pumpkin puree
  • 1 tablespoon unsweetened cocoa powder

Chocolate Cream Cheese Frosting

  • 2 (8oz.) cream cheese, room temp.
  • 3/4 -1 cup cup granulated sugar *
  • 1/4 – 1/3 cup unsweetened cocoa powder*
  • 1 cup heavy whipping cream

Instructions

  1. Preheat oven to 350 F. Line three 8inch baking pans with parchment paper. Set aside.
  2. In a medium bowl whisk flour, baking powder, baking soda, ground cinnamon, nutmeg and a pinch of salt. Set aside.
  3. In a large bowl whisk eggs, granulated sugar, brown sugar, oil, vanilla extract and pumpkin puree until combined.
  4. Add the flour mixture and whisk until combined. 
  5. Take about 1 cup of pumpkin batter out and place it in a small bowl. To that add the cocoa powder. Stir until combined. This will be the chocolate pumpkin batter.
  6. Divide the pumpkin batter among the three 8 inch cake pans. Add dollops of chocolate pumpkin batter. Then swirl with a butter knife.
  7. Bake for 20-25 minutes or until toothpick inserted comes out clean. Cool completely.
  8. To make the cream cheese frosting:
  9. In a stand mixer beat the heavy whipping cream until stiff peaks form. About 2 minutes. Place in a small bowl and  set aside.
  10. To the mixer bowl add cream cheese and granulated sugar. Beat until smooth, fluffy and sugar is dissolved into cream cheese.
  11. Add the cocoa powder and beat until combined. ( at this point, test the frosting. Add more cocoa powder if desired, add more sugar if needed) Don’t adjust the recipe after adding heavy whipping cream. This can cause the heavy whipping cream to get overmixed and grainy.
  12. Add the heavy whipping cream and mix on low speed for 15 seconds. The fold until combined.
  13. Place one cake layer on cake stand. Add the chocolate cream cheese frosting. Repeat until all layers are gone. Then frost the top and sides with remaining frosting.

Notes

  • Feel free to adjust the amount of cocoa powder. The pumpkin cake itself is really rich. After recipe testing the cake many times, I decided to significantly decrease the amount of cocoa powder in the frosting. This balanced out the richness of the cake. If you’d like the frosting to be chocolaty add up to 1/2 cup of cocoa powder.
  • If you decide to add more cocoa powder increase the amount of sugar to 1 cup.
  • Do not adjust the recipe once you add the whipping cream to the cream cheese. If you start mixing it again, you may overmix the the heavy whipping cream. This can cause the heavy whipping to separate and the frosting can become grainy.
  • You can also use pumpkin pie spice instead of ground cinnamon and nutmeg. You will need about 1 teaspoon of pumpkin pie spice and 1/4 teaspoon of additional ground cinnamon.

Find it online: https://tastytreatpantry.com/chocolate-pumpkin-cake/