Monteverde - Pumpkin Cake

Monteverde - Pumpkin Cake - Ink drop

I don’t think I’ve ever eaten pumpkin cake, but from the looks of this ink, it must be delicious! This is Pumpkin Cake from Monteverde’s Sweet Life series. It has a lovely, glossy richness that reminds me of cake batter, and goes well with the series’ pastry and dessert theme.

Visually, this is a rich, saturated chestnut brown. There are strong reddish undertones when the ink is wet, and they fade to a more muted orange influence as it dries. It’s a lovely shading ink, particularly on coated papers. Shading varies from light areas of brilliant, peachy light browns to rich, chocolate brown darker areas. The splatter shows lots of textured, blackened edge sheening on areas of pooling, and this becomes a dark stroke halo in writing. All of this gives strokes nice variation, definition, and depth. It’s a very decadent brown.

Monteverde - Pumpkin Cake - Decadent beauty!

As a writing ink, Pumpkin Cake is very smooth, luxurious, and has a nice wet flow. Strokes were crisp and sharp with no feather or bleed. Although there was no shading or halo on office copy, it still put down a nice, clean line. Shading and halo were moderate to strong on premiums, and they added a lot of personality to strokes and passages. Drying was fairly quick on most coated and uncoated premiums at 10-20 seconds, but longer on Rhodia at 20-30 seconds. At under 5 seconds, office copy was very fast! This was a great writing ink on all six test papers.

Monteverde - Pumpkin Cake - Ink bottle

This is the second ink of the Sweet Life series that I’ve reviewed, and I really like what I’ve found. Monteverde makes a wide range of consistent, attractive, versatile inks, and they’re extremely affordable. I recommend Pumpkin Cake, and I look forward to the rest of this delicious series!