SPICED PUMPKIN AND MINCEMEAT CAKE

My birthday is in December and the weather is usually grim.  This is in sharp contrast to my OH's birthday which is in November when the weather is nearly always much nicer.  Usually good enough to enjoy a walk in the countryside or, like this year, a barbecue in the sunshine.  On his birthday we barbecued salmon fillets and veg skewers for a late lunch and sat outside in the evening to enjoy a glass of fizz until the sun went down.  Just four weeks and two days later, on my birthday, it was grey, misty and miserable outside and definitely not sitting out weather.

In the year of my 70th birthday we had a 69¾ garden party three months early, in September, when it was still warm and sunny.  I'm thinking of permanently adopting an official birthday in September every year from now on!

So, what do you do when it's a grim and miserable day outside but you want to do SOMETHING nice to celebrate?  (Other than join the crowds and mayhem and go shopping.)  You bake a birthday cake!

I've owned this Nordic Ware tin for a few years but so far shied away from actually using it, thinking that the cake would be bound to stick with all those tiny little nooks and crannies.  It took as long to brush it with cake release paste as it did to make the cake mixture but when the cake plopped out of the tin as clean as a whistle it was definitely worth the effort!  The design of the tin would make a good alternative Christmas cake.  Nordic Ware now make something similar in a loaf shape as well as the traditional ring.

I adapted a recipe I have used many times before, one that always turns out well.  I used my last tin of pumpkin purée from the larder and the two spoonfuls of the home made mincemeat left over from making mince pies.  It’s a while since I baked a Bundt cake and I forgot the golden rule of only filling the tin to about three quarters full.  I merrily spooned in all the mixture and it volcanoed up almost over the top.  This can make it harder to turn out but on this occasion I got away with it!  It’s better to under fill the tin and use the excess mixture for a few muffins or fairy cakes.

This time the cake looked spectacular, was beautifully moist and spiced and tasted divine.  The sprinkling of icing sugar "snow" topped it off perfectly.  Our guests were sceptical about pumpkin but I just said "think carrot cake" and they all loved it, even taking away slices for later.  A true endorsement of a delicious cake.

All ready for a Christmas gathering chez nous.

Did you know that the term "Bundt" comes from the German word for a gathering of people, a bund?  The hole in the middle of the tin allows for even baking of a large cake to serve a lot of people at a gathering or party.  Nordic Ware and other manufacturers produce dozens of different designs of Bundt tin to suit every occasion and, although they are not cheap, they are very strong and high quality.  I'm lucky enough to have a small collection of them acquired over many years.  

Another cake made for a New Year party.

Ingredients

200g plain flour

4 tsp baking powder

1 tsp bicarbonate of soda

½ tsp salt

2 tsp cinnamon

250g soft dark brown sugar

3 eggs, lightly beaten

190ml sunflower oil

1 tsp vanilla extract

1 400g tin pumpkin purée

2 tblsp mincemeat

Method

Carefully brush cake release paste into all the crevices of a Bundt tin*.  (See recipe here.)  Preheat the oven to 175°C / 155° fan.

Sift the flour into a bowl, add the baking powder, bicarb, salt and cinnamon and mix well.

In a large bowl, beat together the sugar, eggs, oil, vanilla and pumpkin until well mixed.  Stir in the mincemeat.

Tip the dry ingredients into the bowl of wet ingredients and mix well, making sure everything is well incorporated.  

Spoon the mixture into the Bundt tin, level the top and tap on the worktop a few times to dispel any air bubbles.   

Bake for 40-45 minutes until done.

Cool in the tin for 10 minutes then turn out onto a wire rack to finish cooling.

Transfer to a cake plate or stand and dust lightly with icing sugar.

Cuts into 12-16 slices.

*If you prefer, use a 25cm round springform tin, greased and base lined with baking paper. 

AN ULTRA QUICK PUMPKIN CAKE FOR HALLOWE'EN

I was unsure whether to post about this cake or not - because I was in two minds about it.

I spotted the recipe in a lovely blog called "the English kitchen" by Marie Rayner and just had to try it.  It's called "two ingredient pumpkin cake" and my first reaction was "never!".  

Apparently the recipe was turning up all over the internet a few years ago and the two ingredients are just a Dr Oetker carrot cake mix and a tin of pumpkin purée.   (I don't use a cake mix very often but have noticed that they appear frequently in recipes from the other side of the Atlantic.)

I rummaged in my cupboard and dug out the last tin of pumpkin purée from my stash saved for my usual pumpkin spice cake or a pumpkin pie.  (See here and here.)  I picked up a carrot cake mix on my next supermarket shop and on glancing at the instructions was puzzled.  If you are supposed to add eggs, oil and water to the carrot cake mix, how could it work with just a tin of pumpkin purée instead? I even left a comment on Marie's blog to check and she came back to say yes, that's all you do!

Well it did work after a fashion! The mixture was very stiff and it didn't rise much in the tin.  The cake itself was a fabulous colour, lovely and moist with a nice even crumb and a rich, spicy flavour. However…..each mouthful kind of dissolved into something very…..it’s hard to find the right word…..gluey in the mouth.  Very odd.  I'm not sure I would make it again - unless I was very pressed for time as it certainly was a rapid bake and very tasty.  No measuring out and the longest process required was lining the tin!  

As it happened I didn’t get around to icing it with the cider glaze.  I hadn't any cider in the house and had planned to use apple and mango juice instead, but visitors arrived just as I was taking it out of the oven.  Their opinion on the cake was "the ginger saved it!"  You can see the original recipe here.  I would be interested to hear how you got on if you decide to try it!

It did occur to me that it was the ideal cake for Hallowe'en!  Very quick to make, would take all the spooky decorations you could throw at it and that odd texture in the mouth has a decidedly uncanny feel to it!

Ingredients

A 425g tin of pumpkin purée.  I have seen this for sale in Waitrose on the tinned fruit and veg shelf, also in Tesco with the jams and spreads.  Otherwise you can get it online via Waitrose, Ocado or Amazon.

A box of Dr Oetker carrot cake mix.

For the glaze

140g icing sugar, mixed with a pinch of mixed spice and enough cider or apple juice to make it drizzlable.

Method

Preheat the oven to 180°C / 160° fan.  Butter and line a 22cm square cake tin.

Beat the ingredients together using an electric whisk until well combined. This will take at least two minutes!  Spoon into the tin and level the top. 

Bake for 25-30 minutes until done.  Cool in the tin for ten minutes before turning out onto a wire rack.  Cool completely before drizzling the icing over.

Cuts into 12-16 squares.

PUMPKIN, APPLE AND WALNUT SPICE CAKE

 

I made this cake for our latest cake and bake club meeting where the theme was "autumn".

 

It's a variation on a favourite recipe that uses tinned pumpkin purée.  You can see that recipe here.  I replaced some of the pumpkin with grated eating apple and some of the vegetable oil with walnut oil.

 

I used my "fleur de lys" Nordic Ware Bundt pan and the cake release recipe I posted recently.  The cake slipped out of the tin perfectly and in fact I could even tell that it was completely loose on picking it up and before turning it upside down.  It's such a relief when the cake doesn't stick.

 

 

 

This was my last meeting as club organiser and I was delighted that most of the bakes on the table were cakes (not quiches) just like the old days.  My cake looked good without the maple syrup glaze I had planned to drizzle over it.  The tin makes a fairly plain cake look gorgeous and I thought it best not to detract from the design with any kind of icing.  It tasted good too and was sweet enough without any added icing sugar.  If anything I would add a little more spice next time, maybe a teaspoonful of ginger or mixed spice.

 

 

It had a nice texture, moist and soft without falling apart when cut.

 

 

Ingredients

 

200g plain flour

4 tsp baking powder

1 tsp bicarbonate of soda

½ tsp salt
2 tsp ground cinnamon
1 tsp ground nutmeg
250g soft brown sugar
50g walnuts, roughly chopped
3 eggs
100ml sunflower oil
90ml walnut oil
1 tsp vanilla extract
300g pumpkin purée from a tin
1 large eating apple, peeled and grated

Method

Grease and flour a large Bundt tin, or use cake release paste.  Preheat the oven to 175˚C / 155˚ fan. 

In a medium bowl, mix together the flour, salt, spices, baking powder and bicarb.
In a large bowl, beat the eggs lightly then add the oils, vanilla, sugar, pumpkin and apple.  Mix well then add the dry ingredients and the nuts.  Mix well to combine then pour carefully into the prepared tin.

Tap the tin on the worktop a few times to release any trapped air bubbles then bake for 40 minutes or until done.  Remove from the oven and cool in the tin for 10 minutes before turning out to cool completely.

Dust with icing sugar or drizzle with a simple water icing when cold.

Cuts into 12-16 slices.

PUMPKIN, BANANA AND WALNUT BUNDT CAKE

A little while ago I popped into our local T K Max discount store to see if they had anything interesting in the kitchen ware section.  They often have real bargains, quality stuff at half price or less.

It was my lucky day and I swooped on a genuine Nordic Ware Bavaria Bundt tin which was priced at less than £20 – well below half price. 

When I bought my first Nordic Ware tin I christened it by making a pumpkin spice cake. With a tin of Libby’s pumpkin purée lurking in the kitchen cupboard I decided to do the same again but then, as I breezed past the fruit bowl, I spotted the lovely ripe bananas and thought “ I wonder…….”.

It also occurred to me that it would look rather good on my new cake stand. 

I know, I know, I already have more cake stands than you can shake a stick at, but I have been hankering after a black one for a while.  I have never seen one for sale in the shops and there is always something I don’t like about the ones I’ve seen online, so I decided to make one for myself out of a black plate and a candlestick.   A good dollop of No Nails in the middle and some Gorilla Glue around the edge seemed to do the job of fixing the two securely together.

If you like banana cakes you will love this one.

I used the same basic recipe as before which you can see here.  I just reduced the amount of pumpkin purée to allow for the addition of the bananas and added a few chopped walnuts instead of the brazils.  It had a nice, even crumb and one of the good things about Bundt cakes is that they are easy to cut into nice tidy slices that are as thick or thin as you like.  In fact for large gatherings (or cake stalls) you can get a lot of slices from one cake.  However, if you don’t have a Bundt tin you can use a 23cm round tin.

Definitely a cake I shall be making again.

Ingredients

200g plain flour

4 tsp baking powder

1 tsp bicarbonate of soda

a good pinch of salt

2 tsp ground cinnamon

1 tsp ground nutmeg

250g light muscovado sugar

3 eggs, lightly beaten

190ml vegetable oil (I used rapeseed oil)

1 tsp vanilla extract

2 medium bananas, peeled and mashed

300g pumpkin purée (from a tin or home made)

50g chopped walnuts

Method

Butter and flour the Bundt tin or butter and base line a 23cm round cake tin.  Preheat the oven to 175°C / 155° fan / gas mk 3-4.

In a medium bowl, combine the flour, bicarb, bp, salt and spices. 

In a larger bowl, beat the eggs with the pumpkin, oil, vanilla and sugar.  Add the bananas and nuts and stir through.

Fold in the flour mixture and mix well to ensure there are no pockets of dry flour. 

Spoon the mixture into the tin, filling to a maximum of three quarters full.  Tap the tin sharply a couple of times on the worktop to remove any air pockets and bake for 40-50 minutes until done.  There should be no wobble in the middle of the cake and it should be just coming away from the tin at the edges.

Remove from the oven and leave to cool in the tin for 10 minutes.  Turn out carefully (with fingers and toes crossed) to finish cooling on a wire rack.  Dust with icing sugar before serving if you like.

Cuts into 12-15 slices.

PUMPKIN PIE

Not everyone likes Christmas pudding (something I find hard to understand myself) so I usually put on an alternative on Christmas Day.  This year it was pumpkin pie.

Which brings me to a recent bargain purchase, the book “Bake it Great” by Luis Toryano.  He was a Great British Bake Off contestant a few years ago and, like so many of them, consolidated his success on the show by writing a book.

There are a lot of bread recipes in the book and I’m not into bread making, but for the £3 bargain price in the book shop I thought there was enough in it to make it worth buying.  Flipping through the pages I spotted a recipe for pumpkin pie which uses tinned pumpkin purée rather than fresh pumpkin. 

I have been a fan of tinned pumpkin, Libby’s being the only brand I have ever seen for sale in the shops and not many of the shops at that – Waitrose being the only reliable source of it – ever since I started making pumpkin spice cake which is always a hit at events and cake stalls.  You can read about that here. 

As we restocked our new kitchen cupboards with all the stuff that has been stored in boxes for months on end, a couple of tins of pumpkin purée turned up so I decided that pumpkin pie would be our alternative this year – along with the usual apple crumble.  Belt and braces, appealing to all tastes.  (In other words I could just imagine the look on my dad’s face when presented with pumpkin pie.)

The other bargain purchase was a Christmas cake stand found in a local charity shop.  Why anyone should give away something like that amazes me, but luckily for me they did and for £3 I am very pleased with it.

The pie was delicious.  I have never made pumpkin pie before, although I have been tempted by the recipe on the back of the label on the Libby’s tin.  I haven’t actually eaten it too often either.  It was very quick and easy to make, especially as I used ready rolled, ready made pastry, which it needed to be as I was quite poorly on Christmas Day this year, with a stinker of a cold and although determined to get the pie made I doubt I could have managed a more challenging recipe.  There was slightly too much filling for my flan dish so rather than over-fill it I baked the excess separately to be enjoyed later.

The pastry was crisp and the filling light and almost mousse like, filling the house with the aroma of spices as it baked, just right for Christmas I thought.  Luis suggests using sweet shortcrust pastry but mine was plain as that’s what I had in the freezer.

Ingredients

1 pack of ready made shortcrust pastry

2 large eggs

1 tin of pumpkin purée (425g)

125g soft light brown sugar

1 tsp ground nutmeg

1 tsp ground ginger

1 tsp ground cinnamon

1 tsp salt

1 large tin evaporated milk (410g)

Method

Preheat the oven to 220°C / 200°fan / gas mk 7.  Use the pastry to line a suitable tart tin or flan dish (loose bottomed or ceramic) and blind bake for 15 minutes.

Beat the eggs very lightly in a large bowl.  Add the pumpkin purée and all the other ingredients and stir together to combine.

Pour carefully into the blind baked pastry case and bake for 15 minutes.  Then reduce the oven temperature to 200°C / 180° fan and bake for a further 35-40 minutes.  The filling should have a slight wobble to it when baked and will set as it cools.

Leave to cool completely before turning out (if using a metal tin) and serve cold.

Serves 6-8.

PUMPKIN SPICE CAKE

Late last year I spotted a beautiful bundt tin in a blog (used for a lemon and poppy seed cake recipe as it happens) and fell in love.  With some birthday and Christmas money burning a hole in my pocket I decided this was what I wanted to spend it on more than anything else.  I tracked one down at Amazon and could hardly contain myself until it arrived.

It’s absolutely gorgeous and you can see the effect in the original post in the blog “DeliciousDeliciousDelicious” here.

I put it in my cupboard with all the other baking tins and there it stayed.  I was almost afraid of it.  Its beauty taunted me every time I reached for an ordinary round cake tin or a muffin tin, especially if I had to move it out of the way to get to the tin I wanted.

The truth is, I didn’t quite know what to do with it.  I have never made a bundt cake in my life and didn’t know if I could just use any old cake recipe – imagine how disappointed I would feel if the cake stuck to the tin, or sank, or didn’t work for some reason, perhaps because bundt cake mixture is different from other cake mixtures. 

Then the tin made another appearance in the same blog, this time used for a pumpkin spice cake – and the spell was broken.  I couldn’t wait to bake one for myself.

I greased and floured the tin lovingly, followed the recipe precisely, and to my absolute relief and delight, the cake came out of the tin perfectly !! 

It was simplicity itself to make, the only tricky part being getting hold of all the ingredients.  The recipe uses a tin of pumpkin purée.  I searched in all my local supermarkets; Tesco, Sainsbury’s, Morrison’s and the Co-op.  None of them had it, or had even heard of it.

I was considering ordering it from Amazon when I mentioned it to a colleague at work and she said she had one at home that she got from Waitrose.  I immediately sent an email to Nick, who works in Sheffield where there is now a large Waitrose store, and off he toddled in his lunch break to grab the last two tins on the shelf.  That’s love for you, isn’t it !

I took the cake to my friend Pat’s Macmillan coffee morning.  There were lots of other yummy cakes on sale, plus scones to die for, but my pumpkin cake won me the star baker award. It just goes to show what a difference a posh tin will make !

Pat recently visited her son who lives in Texas and she told me that all the American housewives used tinned pumpkin purée to make their famous pumpkin pies etc.  So I didn’t feel too guilty about not buying a real pumpkin and making my own.

Not only did the cake look good, it tasted wonderful too.  I will definitely be making one of these for our Children in Need cake stall at work later this month.  It will be interesting to see how well it sells.  Normally, the best sellers are the glamorous cakes with lots of gooey icing on top, such as coffee and walnut or chocolate.  Cakes that are slightly out of the ordinary take longer to sell, apart from the good old carrot cake which the public seem to have a liking for.   Come to think of it, that is also usually slathered in a sweet frosting so maybe that’s the key.

Maybe I should decorate my gorgeous swirly cake with some gooey icing, or at least a drizzle of something……….but would it spoil the look ??

Here’s the recipe anyway.  I have the approval of DeliciousDeliciousDelicious to reproduce it and you can see the original post on his blog here.  I am most grateful to Peter for allowing me to pinch his idea, not only for the recipe, but also using exactly the same tin and a very similar photo !!  Which just goes to show that perfection is hard to improve upon.

Ingredients

200g plain flour
4 tsp baking powder
1 tsp bicarbonate of soda
½ tsp salt
2 tsp cinnamon
1 tsp nutmeg
250g soft brown sugar
50g Brazil nuts, chopped
3 eggs, lightly beaten
190ml vegetable oil
1 tsp vanilla extract
1 x 400g tin pumpkin purée

Method

Pre-heat the oven to 175°C/155° fan.  Grease and flour your bundt tin*.

In a medium bowl, mix together the flour, baking powder, bicarb, salt and spices.

In a large bowl, mix together the beaten eggs, oil, sugar vanilla extract and pumpkin purée, until well combined.  Stir in the chopped brazil nuts.

Tip the flour mixture into the bowl and fold in, making sure everything is well combined.  Pour the mixture into the bundt tin and level the top.

Bake for 40 minutes, or until the cake passes the usual tests.  Cool in the tin for ten minutes then turn out onto a wire rack.

Cuts into 12-16 slices.

*If you haven’t got a bundt tin, use a 25cm square tin.  Otherwise you will find the tin at Amazon here.

PUMPKIN & GINGER TRAYBAKE

I first spotted this recipe in a lovely blog written by Snowy, called “Cookbooks Galore” and couldn’t wait to have a go at it myself.  When I was mixing it I suddenly decided to bake it as a traybake rather than in a loaf tin.  I called it “Halloween cake” and Nick took some to work to try out on his colleagues on October 31st, telling them it was made of pumpkin, toad and broomstick !! 

They were not put off and it was a big success !!

So  when Ruth announced that the Pink Whisk baking challenge in November was for traybakes to raise money for charity,  I decided to make it again for our annual cake stall for “Children in Need”.  Snowy made hers with butternut squash so I did too.  The recipe originally came from Good Food magazine and I found it on the website here.  (It’s also in the “101 cakes and bakes” recipe book.)

 

The butternut squash was such a glorious colour that grating it was a feast for the eyes.  The colour, combined with the warmth of the ginger, meant the cake looked and smelled lovely when it came out of the oven.  In fact the whole house smelled wonderful ~ mind you, I did bake seven cakes that day so the smell of baking was pretty much full on throughout the house !!

As I mentioned before, the cakes that sell the best at our cake stall are the ones slathered in loads of gooey icing and decoration, so I decided to drizzle a simple icing on it and decorate it with a few gold sprinkles to make it more appealing. 

It wasn’t the best seller but it was absolutely scrumptious.  The plus side of having cakes leftover is that I can take them home to enjoy myself or, as in this case, sell them to the milkman when he called to collect his money ~ more in the pot for Children in Need !!

Ingredients

175g butter, melted

140g clear runny honey

1 large egg, beaten

250g raw peeled pumpkin or butternut squash

100g light muscovado sugar

350g self raising flour

1 tablespoon ground ginger

2 tablespoons demerara sugar (optional for sprinkling over the cake)*

Method

Preheat the oven to 180°C/ 160°fan

Grease and line the base of a large traybake or roasting tin, approx 30x20 cm.  Make the lining paper long enough to overhang at each end to make it easier to lift out the cake when baked.

Grate the peeled pumpkin or butternut squash.  In a large bowl, mix the melted butter, honey and egg.  Stir in the pumpkin or squash.  Add the flour, ginger and muscovado sugar.  Mix until well combined.

Pour the mixture into the prepared tin and level the top.  If you are not going to ice the cake, sprinkle the demerara sugar on top*.

Bake for 40-50 minutes until golden brown and risen.  Leave to cool in the tin for 5 minutes then turn out onto a wire rack.  Sprinkle a little more demerara sugar on top whilst the cake is still warm if you like*.

When cool, cut into about 24 pieces or squares, depending on how big you like them.

*Alternatively, leave out the demerara sugar and when the cake is cool, drizzle over some icing made with icing sugar and water or lemon juice.  Add gold sprinkles or anything else you fancy to decorate.

Makes 24-30 squares