Pumpkin, it's not just for pie.

I wanted to make a cake recently for Genna's belated birthday celebration here at home.
She was complaining because no one in LA baked her a cake. That was all the excuse I needed. I had several small pie pumpkins left over from a friend's wedding.

I processed one these pumpkins the same way as I did for pumpkin cheesecake. You can certainly use canned pumpkin if that's what you have.

I looked at several pumpkin cakes recipes on line, some of which has some rather grim reviews. I finely found one at the Joy of baking website, here is my version.

Pumpkin Spice Cake

Ingredients
1/2 cup butter, at room temperature
1 1/4 cup brown sugar
2 large eggs
1 cup pumpkin puree
1 teaspoon vanilla
2 cups sifted flour
1/4 teaspoon baking powder
1 teaspoon baking soda
1/4 teaspoon salt
1/2 teaspoon ground cinnamon
1/4 teaspoon ground ginger
1/8 teaspoon or a dash of ground cloves*
1/2 cup milk
1 tablespoon lemon juice
* Be careful not to put in too much clove it can overpower the flavor.

1) Preheat the oven to 350 F, spray two 8 inch round cake pans with oil, then cover the bottom of each with a piece of parchment. This makes it very easy to remove the cakes from the pans.

2) Place the butter and brown sugar in your mixing bowl and beat until fluffy, about three minutes.
3) Add the eggs one at a time, beating well each time
4) Add the pumpkin puree and the vanilla, beat some more. It will look curdled.

 5) Mix the milk together with the lemon juice in a small bowl, set aside to let it curdle.

6) I like to sift together in a separate bowl my dry ingredients: flour, baking soda and powder, salt and spices.

7) Add the flour mixture and milk alternately to the batter, starting and ending with the flour mixture.
8) Divide evenly into the prepared cake pans.

9) Bake for 25 minutes or until the toothpick comes out clean.

10) Cool on a wire rack for 10 minutes.

11) Remove from pans and allow to cool completely before frosting.
      They may look uneven but after frosting they will be fine.

12) You can frost them with your favorite butter cream frosting or a cream cheese frosting like the one I used for my carrot cake or the honey ginger butter cream I used on the pumpkin cupcakes.

I happen to have some leftover caramel sauce which I used as the filling. This was a great idea !!

13) When you go to frost the rest of the cake, do remember to start on the top and work to the sides.

Voila !

 

 This cake turned out much better than I expected, it wasn't too sweet, so it offset the frosting and filling, it was moist but not too dense. Genna was very protective of it, she took the leftovers back to LA much to Bob's chagrin.