Pumpkin Spice Cake
Yesterday I posted a recipe for a Delicious Holiday Dip. That recipe only called for 1/4 cup of pumpkin puree (solid pack canned pumpkin). What do you do with the rest of the can? Well…what I did with it last week was make a Pumpkin Spice Cake. This is an OLD tried-and-true recipe that I altered a little bit. It is REALLY easy. When I took it to my daughter’s place of employment, it was promptly deemed DELICIOUS and scarfed down.
I baked my cake in my old Pampered Chef Rectangular Baker. Any 9 x 13 will work. As oven temps and types of bakeware all affect the cooking time and temperature, use the old fashioned method of testing by inserting a toothpick for doneness. Remember that a glass baking dish and dark coated bakeware generally call for a lower temp by 25°F. I kept the recipe temp of 350°F for the Rectangular Baker, but a thinner glass (such as Pyrex) or dark coated pan may require reducing the temperature to 325°F. Don’t be afraid to write down what works best for your oven on the recipe. I’m always writing notes on my recipes so I know for next time. So…without further ado, let’s make a cake!
Prep work
First, start your oven, grease or spray your cake pan and measure your ingredients all out before you start mixing. The dry ingredients (the first 7 ingredients) should be measured out into a bowl that is NOT your mixing bowl. I like to mix them together with a few turns of a big whisk. Crack your eggs into a bowl and set aside. You don’t want to spoil the entire cake by putting in a bad egg (I’ve gotten the start of little chickens twice in my life – once when I cracked it directly into a big recipe and well…ICK, and once recently in culinary school – right after I was rediculed for always breaking each egg into a separate bowl and then adding each egg to the egg bowl. What a lesson for those young cooks who didn’t believe me!) Then measure out the rest of your ingredients.
Ingredients
2 Cups all-purpose flour
¼ tsp baking soda
2 tsp baking powder
½ tsp ground nutmeg
¼ tsp ground cloves
½ tsp salt
½ cup butter (one stick), room temperature
1-1/2 cup brown sugar
2 eggs, room temperature
¼ cup buttermilk, room temperature
¾ cup pumpkin puree (solid pack pumpkin)
Directions
Cream the butter and sugar together until light. This will take about 3-5 minutes in your mixer. Beat in eggs one at a time, mixing well (if they are both in the same bowl, just allow one to plop in, wait until it blends in, then plop in the next one). Mix well, but do not whip. Now alternate mixing in the dry ingredients, buttermilk, and the pumpkin. Blend well.
Pour into your greased cake pan. Bake 30-35 minutes.
Cool, remove from pan after about 10 minutes IF you are putting on a serving platter or cake taker base. I recommend covering with waxed paper, flipping out onto a cookie sheet, then immediately flipping onto your serving tray, placing a paper doily on the cake bottom before flipping, if you are using one. We generally eat out of the cake pan; or eat a few pieces, then freezing the rest in pieces for later as a full cake is too big for my household.
I didn’t frost the cake, I just sprinkled a little powdered, sugar using a small strainer. You could actually put a template down and sprinkle a design. Years ago I remember laying a paper lacy doily down, and sprinkling over that, then removing the doily for a pretty pattern.
I hope you enjoy this as much as we do. It’s a nice, not-so-sweet, treat or ending to a meal.