Pumpkin Cake ( + recipe!)

It’s Halloween! Hurrah!

Have you got your house decorated, your pumpkins prepared and your kitchen emanating the devilishly delicious smells of spooky foodstuffs? Are you garbed in creepy costume and armed with a huge container of candy for all the trick or treaters?

I have spent my day doing all the above :)

Obviously I carved my pumpkin yesterday, but today I dealt with all the leftover innards!

In the past I made soup from a recipe, this year I decided to be a little more ‘adventurous’ and try out some pumpkin cake, too. I’ll write about the soup (with a recipe) in my next post, but for now, here are the cakes!

 Clockwise from top: Bleedin’ Cupcake, pumpkin ‘cookie’, pumpkin rock cake

Of them all, the rock cakes came out the best--just sweet enough, light and yummy! Read on for a recipe!

The cookie recipe was one my Mum found on the internet. It didn’t honestly work that well, though that was because it’s all in cups, whereas I measure things in grams. So – after looking online and finding a ridiculous conversion that made no sense – I guessed.

Then halfway through mixing I threw in some more flour and sugar for good measure.

Okay, I added more cinnamon than the recipe called for, too. I like cinnamon.

The cupcakes were the same mixture as the cookies; I had a bit left over and thought it looked more like cake batter than cookie mixture, so I stuck it in some cake cases! Since they looked boring without any decoration, I added some blood-red icing.

I made the rock cakes based on a recipe in my Mum’s trusty and dog-eared copy of The Dairy Book of Home Cookery.  

Here’s my adaptation of the recipe:

Pumpkin Rock Cakes

Makes 10

200g/8oz self-raising flour

100g/4oz butter

75g/3oz caster sugar

100g/4oz pumpkin

1 egg

2-4 teaspoons of milk (I used 3)

2-3 teaspoons of ground cinnamon

1 teaspoon vanilla essence

1. Sift flour and cinnamon into a bowl and mix.

2. Rub in butter (this part is messy!)

3. Add sugar and pumpkin to the mixture

4. Beat the egg and add to the mixture along with the milk and vanilla essence.

5. Mix to a stiff batter (add a little more flour if the batter won’t stiffen)

6. Use a tablespoon to place dollops of the mixture on a greased baking tray, leaving space between since the cakes will spread a little

7. Bake in the centre of the oven at 200°C/400°F (180°C for a fan oven) for 15-20 minutes.

8. Transfer onto a wire rack to cool.

 

The original recipe called for dried fruit and didn’t include the cinnamon or vanilla essence. The great thing with the recipes in this book is that they’re easily adapted--the book itself has plenty of cake recipes that use variations of the same basic recipe; it’s a good way to learn how to cook!

Come back soon to check out my easy pumpkin soup recipe!


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