It's been proven time and time again that stuff is better when it's baked inside of a cake. For example: cupcake-stuffed cupcakes, truffle-stuffed cupcakes, the entire website Bake it in a Cake.
But what happens when you do the reverse, and bake a cake inside something unexpected? Like a pumpkin?
The original idea here was to make mini cakes in cored-out small pumpkins, but the baking was irregular; baking a batch of cake in one large pumpkin yielded a far more delicious (and good-looking) result.
The moisture of the pumpkin yields a cake that had a texture something like a baked pudding—very dense and flavorful. To keep things from getting too pumpkin-heavy I tried this recipe with carrot cake; the flavors and spices worked beautifully with the pumpkin scent and flavor. It's even better when generously frosted and served with ice cream.