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Pumpkin Chocolate Marble Cake with Chocolate & Pumpkin Spice Buttercream Stripes

Print Recipe
A gorgeously thick pumpkin and chocolate swirled cake with striped chocolate and pumpkin spiced buttercream.

Ingredients

Pumpkin Chocolate Marble Cake

  • 15oz can canned pumpkin not canned pumpkin pie
  • 1 Tablespoon pumpkin pie spice
  • 3 large eggs room temperature
  • 1/4 cup sour cream room temperature
  • 1/2 cup buttermilk room temperature
  • 1/3 cup vegetable oil
  • 1 Tablespoon vanilla
  • 1 15.25oz Box Yellow Cake Mix I prefer the taste and texture of Duncan Hines brand, but anything similar should do.
  • 1/2 cup cocoa powder

Chocolate + Pumpkin Spice Buttercream

  • 2 cups (or 4 sticks) unsalted butter left out at room temperature for 10 minutes
  • pinch of salt
  • 1 Tablespoon vanilla
  • 1 teaspon pumpkin pie spice
  • 1/4 cup heavy cream + more if needed to thin out buttercream
  • 7-8 cups powdered sugar
  • 1/2 cup cocoa powder
  • 1-2 drops orange gel coloring

Instructions

For the Chocolate Pumpkin Marble Cake

  • Preheat the oven to 325 degrees, then prep three 6" cake rounds with a swipe of shortening and dust of flour. Set aside.
  • In one large bowl, hand-whisk together all the ingredients except for the cake mix and cocoa.
  • Sift in the yellow cake mix and stir until it's just combined (don't overmix!). Split the batter in half (so add half of the batter to another bowl), then gently stir in the cocoa into one of the bowls.
  • Alternate adding in the pumpkin cake batter and chocolate pumpkin cake batter into the prepared cake rounds, then swirl the batter with a knife to create the marbling affect in the cake.
  • Bake the cake rounds for 25-30 minutes until the centers have finished baking through. Flip the cake rounds out onto a wire rack to cool completely, then wrap them up in plastic wrap and chill until frozen or cold before assembly (frozen cakes are easier to stack and frost!).

Chocolate & Pumpkin Spice Striped Buttercream

  • In a bowl of a stand mixer fitted with the paddle attachment, whip up the butter until it's light and fluffy.
  • Add in the salt, vanilla, pumpkin spice, and heavy cream and whip up again until combined.
  • Slowly add in the powdered sugar with the mixer on low speed and about 1/2 cup at a time. Add in more heavy cream if needed (about a Tablespoon at a time).
  • Reserve 2 cups of the pumpkin spice buttercream in a separate bowl and add in the orange gel coloring to tint the buttercream a soft orange. Add the buttercream to a piping bag with the end snipped off.
  • With the rest of the buttercream add in the cocoa and mix until it's fully incorporated.
  • Stack and crumb coat the cake using the cocoa buttercream (making sure you have enough left for the final stripe layers. Chill to set.
  • Add on the rest of the cocoa buttercream to the outside of the cake, then use a stripe cake scraper to make clean indents in the sides of the cake. The cleaner the stripe, the neater the stripes will be. Chill (freeze) about 10 minutes to make sure the buttercream is firm, then pipe in the orange pumpkin spice buttercream stripes. Using a flat cake scraper scrape pressing firmly) the stripes until the clean stripes start to show through from underneath. Add more buttercream where it's needed, and scrape again until the stripes are clean. Enjoy!