It’s the season of turning leaves, wooly jumpers, Gilmore Girls and.. Pumpkin Cake! This cake is cooked in a basic square low tin, so it’s quick to bake and easy to serve in small squares, making it perfect for a party or for kids at Halloween.
Why you’ll love this Pumpkin Cake recipe
⭐️ An easy but impressive bake for sharing ⭐️ Shortcut of using tinned pumpkin ⭐️ Comforting, spicy autumnal flavours It is very rich recipe and uses a LOT of (expensive) sugar. Loaf cakes like that also tend to take a LONG time to cook. Because of how moist (sorry) pumpkin is, getting the cake cooked all the way through could sometimes be tricky. A few people left comments asking about this and in our tests we even found it hard to gauge when it was cooked. So… I wanted to come up with an easier to handle pumpkin bake. I went back to the drawing board. Meet my Pumpkin Cake! It’s a basic sponge, made with canned pumpkin and spices added. SIMPLES. (Although please add the cream cheese frosting too because it’s amazing!) There’s a couple of tricks I’ve also come up with and added below. Hope you’ll love it!
Fresh pumpkin or canned?
Whilst you CAN use your fresh pumpkin here, to use it in baking you need to cook it down in a pan for a long time to remove as much water as possible. I tend to use our decorative pumpkins for soup and use a canned puree for this as it’s already cooked down for you, which a lot of supermarkets sell these days.
How to make Pumpkin Cake
Hint: Place a baking sheet into the oven to warm while it is preheating, then sit your cake tin ON TOP of the baking sheet to bake. This will help to bake it evenly and thoroughly underneath. If your cake IS iced, you will need to store in the fridge. I avoid this where possible as it will dry the cake slightly, but is necessary for the cream cheese. Freezer You can freeze this cake for another day! Make sure you wrap it in a couple of layers of greaseproof paper for the freezer and defrost it at room temperature before eating. To try and avoid this, put the tin you’re cooking on onto a PREHEATED baking sheet when it’s in the oven. This just helps to conduct the heat better to the base of the cake. To do this: put a baking sheet into the oven when you preheat it, then when your cake is prepared in the regular tin, sit it ON TOP of the extra baking sheet which is already hot. Boom! This should ideally be unsalted. Also, use your butter at room temperature, or if it has come straight from the fridge, microwave for a few seconds until slightly softened. You will only use half a tin for this recipe (the tins are usually 425g). To avoid wastage, you can freeze the remainder to use in a cake for another day. Simply spoon it into a freezer bag, remove the air out of it and freeze. Defrost thoroughly before you use it again. ⭐️ Mini Pumpkin Bread Loaves ⭐️ ⭐️ Halloween Pumpkin Bundt Cake ⭐️ ⭐️ Pumpkin Spiced Latte Cake ⭐️ Also I’d LOVE to see your cooking creations. If you’d like to share yours with me, you can tag me on Instagram (@tamingtwins).
