Pumpkin Spice Cake

Now that I have a baked up and processed all my wonderful Halloween squashes, I’m ready to start my Thanksgiving baking!! And my pre-Thanksgiving baking, and my post-Thanksgiving baking… I love cooking with squashes 🙂  I have a few stand-by recipes I use a lot, but I always try to test out a few new ones to spice it up.

This is a recipe I converted from a two-layer with orange cream cheese frosting to something a little more lo-cal (and kid-friendly) version. It was so good I could barely get pictures of it before we snarfed it all down!  It is moist, dense, and holiday spicy.  You could easily drizzle a little sugary glaze on top for extra wows, but I just dusted it with a little powered sugar.  The kids and hubby are happy to pick it up for eating so no dishes and minimal clean-up required!  Great for bringing to Holiday dinners – it will keep for a few days if you need to make it ahead of time

Ingredients

• 2 sticks (1 cup) unsalted butter, softened
• Non-stick cooking spray (preferably designed for baking), for greasing bundt pan
• 11 1/4 ounces (2 1/4 cups) all-purpose flour
• 2 teaspoons baking powder
• 1 teaspoon baking soda
• 2 teaspoons cinnamon
• 1 teaspoon ground allspice
• 3/4 teaspoon nutmeg
• 3/4 teaspoon ginger
• 1/4 teaspoon cloves
• 1/2 teaspoon salt
• 1 1/4 cups canned solid-pack pumpkin
• 3/4 cup well-shaken buttermilk
• 1/2 teaspoons vanilla
• 8 3/4 ounces (1 1/4 cups) granulated sugar
• 3 large eggs

Directions

1. Preheat oven to 350F. Grease bundt pan with non-stick cooking spray – I like Pam for Baking to give it a more authentic crust.  You can certainly go old-school and butter/flour it, but that is a lot of work in a bundt pan!
   
2. Whisk together flour, baking powder, baking soda, cinnamon, allspice, nutmeg, ginger, cloves, and salt in a bowl. Note: there are a lot of spices here.  If you only have 3 or 4 of the five, that’s fine.  Try to include cinnamon and cloves for sure.
   
3. Whisk together pumpkin, buttermilk and vanilla in another bowl.
4. Beat butter and granulated sugar in a large bowl with an electric mixer at medium-high speed until pale and fluffy, 3 to 5 minutes, then add eggs and beat 1 minute. Reduce speed to low and add flour and pumpkin mixtures alternately in batches, beginning and ending with flour mixture and mixing until batter is just mixed.
   
5. Have your helpers spoon batter into bundt pan and bake until a wooden toothpick or skewer inserted in center of cake comes out clean, 45 to 50 minutes. Cool cake in pan for about  15 minutes, then turn it out onto a cooling rack or plate.
   
6. Dust with a generous amount of powdered sugar – but a word of warning… wait until it is completely cooled first!  I was in a rush and did it while the cake was still a little warm and the sugar turned an interesting yellowish, greenish color from the pumpkin and spices.  You can kind of see it in the pictures.  It may do this anyway, but if you wait until it’s cool and/or right before you serve it, it will be less obvious.
   

A note about buttermilk… I never have actual buttermilk in the fridge.  It is a wonderful flavor and I love it in my baking with it, but since I never have any, I use this trick my mother showed me years ago. Measure out the prescribed about of REGULAR milk (whole works a little better, but any will do in a pinch).  To that, add some vinegar, 1 Tbsp for each cup of milk.  Set it aside for about 5 minutes and it will curdle up enough to make a buttermilk substitute.  Try it!