Pumpkins, Pumpkins, Everywhere!

The pumpkin crop is great this year! Some falls, pie pumpkins are hard to find, but I've been able to get them for a great price on a regular basis since pumpkin season started this year. I love it!

I don't think I've made the same pumpkin thing twice, either, which my DH would say is just par for the course for me! I love experimenting with new recipes and trying new things and I rarely make anything twice, pumpkin or no.

My latest pumpkin endeavor was pumpkin cake. We were invited to a bonfire and requested to bring a snack to share. I thought pumpkin bars/cake would be a great autumnal treat for the occasion and could be eaten without utensils if necessary. However, when I started looking for a recipe, I discovered that they all were basically the same, and they all called for 4 eggs, 2 cups of sugar, and 1 cup of oil. I didn't want to use that many eggs in one shot since I only had a dozen on hand, you know how much I hate using so much sugar in a recipe (even dessert), and I try not to use more than 1/2 cup of oil in a recipe either, preferably less. In fact, I try to use something other than oil in a recipe if I can. Furthermore, pumpkin cake just has to have cream cheese frosting, but I did not have any powdered sugar on hand (plus, I'm more than a little leery of all that sugar, too), so I had to find a cream cheese frosting recipe that did not require powdered sugar.

So I made a few adjustments. Here you have it:

Pumpkin Cake, My Way
1 3/4 cups pumpkin puree
1/2 cup applesauce
1/2 cup oil
3 eggs
1/2 cup sugar
1/2 cup honey
1 cup flour
1 cup white whole wheat flour
2 tsp baking powder
1 tsp baking soda
2 tsp cinnamon
1/2 tsp salt
1/2 tsp ground ginger
1/4 tsp ground cloves

Preheat oven to 350F; grease a 9x13 pan.

Mix the wet ingredients together until well blended:


Whisk the dry ingredients together in a separate bowl (aren't those warm rich browns so pretty?):
Add the dry ingredients to the wet ingredients and stir until blended:

Pour the batter into the prepared pan and bake for 25-30 minutes. Cool and frost.

You'll find the cream cheese frosting recipe here at Allrecipes.com. I was delighted to find this recipe (after searching for quite some time... should have started at Allrecipes!!) because most other "non" powdered sugar versions of cream cheese frosting still called for 1/2 cup. I didn't even have 1/2 a cup, so this recipe was exactly what I needed. I think I will use it from now on because it was easy to make and delicious. It definitely tastes like cream cheese, though, so only make it if you like that taste. Another warning: the instructions on the recipe make it sound difficult as far as mixing the ingredients for the proper amount of time. Don't worry about that. It was simple. Just beat on high with your mixer until everything's smooth, and you're good.

So QUICK: pretty much as easy as a pan of brownies. In fact, you can enjoy the cake straight, without the frosting, for an even faster weeknight treat. Also, you can use canned pumpkin if you don't have fresh.

Super EASY! I love 3-step cake recipes: mix the wet ingredients, mix the dry ingredients, mix them together. Nothing complicated.

As far as cakes go, I guess it could be considered CHEAP, especially with pie pumpkins so readily available this year. I reduced the eggs to 3 to help with the cheap factor, and using less sugar doesn't hurt the budget either.

It's HEALTHY-er than the original recipe, since I cut the sugar down by half and then substituted half of the remaining sugar with honey. Also, I always use turbinado sugar in my baking as it's less refined than regular granulated sugar. (It's now available at my local warehouse club store, and one bag lasts me the whole month, at least, depending on how much baking I do. Awesome!) I cut down the oil by half also, and used coconut oil instead of vegetable oil, as it has more nutritional value (not hard to do, considering vegetable oil has almost no nutritional benefits). Furthermore, any dessert based on a vegetable is healthy in my book!!

As it turned out, the bonfire was rained out, so I was all dressed up (not really) with a dessert and nowhere to go. Instead, we invited ourselves over to the in-laws and had fun playing games and eating dessert. Yum!