My whole vegetable garden was kind of a disaster this year as I started too late, the beds I made were constantly crowded by cockspur grass that I couldn’t keep under control and my heart wasn’t really in it. But I managed to grow courgettes and pumpkins and quite a few tomatoes so not everything was a miserable failure.
And look how cute these pumpkins are although they are bright orange :o) Any ingredient that can turn into a cake is a good ingredient. It will taste quite like what autumn should taste like if one could eat autumn. The texture is lovely and especially if you eat it cold a day later.
Ingredients Cakes:
450 g pumpkin (shredded)
2 tsp cinnamon
260 g light brown caster sugar
4 eggs
240 ml vegetable oil (corn or sunflower)
2 tsp vanilla extract
1 tsp ground nutmeg
1 tsp ground ginger
Pinch of salt
2 tsp bicarbonate
240 g plain flour
Instructions:
Preheat oven to 170°C. Grease two 22 cm round cake pans with butter and line with baking paper.
Cut and shred the pumpkin, stir in the cinnamon.
I always start with mixing the “wet ingredients” before I add the “dry ingredients”. So whisk in order from the ingredients list.
Add all the dry ingredients one by one and mix in the shredded pumpkin.
Pour batter evenly into cake pans. Bake for around 30 minutes or until the cakes are baked through. Insert a toothpick into the center of the cake if it comes out clean, it is done. Allow cakes to cool completely in the pans set on a wire rack. The cakes must be completely cool before frosting.
Ingredients Frosting:
200 g cream cheese (Philadelphia for example)
500 g icing sugar (powdered sugar)
125 g unsalted butter (room temp)
zest of one orange
Instructions Cakes
Add all the ingredients in a bowl and whisk until you have a smooth rich paste. Frost the cake between the two cakes, stack and frost the top. I store the cake in the fridge before eating so that the frosting is nice and solid.
Enjoy. Love, Yves