Pumpkin trompe l'oeil dessert

Peel, core and cut pumpkin flesh into small cubes for the inserts; roast some pumpkin for the mousse.

Combine carrots, orange juice, half the sugar, orange zest, ginger and star anise; add the pumpkin cubes and cook 20 minutes until cooked through.

Drain, saving the juice and the cubes separately.

Mix the remaining sugar with agar-agar, add to the juice, bring to a boil and cook 3 minutes, stirring every so often.

Cool over ice water or refrigerate a few hours until set; blend smooth with an immersion blender, fold in the pumpkin cubes, fill sphere moulds and freeze at least 12 hours.

Ganache montée: boil half the heavy cream with the milk, mix with melted white chocolate, add softened gelatin and roasted pumpkin, then the remaining cold cream; add allspice to taste and refrigerate overnight.

Whip half the ganache to medium peaks, fill large half-sphere moulds halfway, set in a frozen insert, cover with mousse and freeze at least three hours.

Whip the other half; demould the frozen halves, trim imperfections with a paring knife, assemble with the mousse into spheres, add a dollop of mousse for the stems and freeze again a few hours.

Unmould and carve into small pumpkins; keep frozen until glazing. Press marzipan through a garlic press to make stems.

Glaze: melted cocoa butter and white chocolate one to one, tinted orange and red with fat-based colouring, used at 113F / 45C.

Insert a bamboo skewer, dip each cake in the glaze, lift and rotate until set; remove the skewer and attach a marzipan stem.