I’m a bad food blogger. You’ll understand why I wrote that once you see the one, sad, pathetic, picture I took of the pumpkin cake. *rolls eyes*
The baking part I’m good at, just not the documenting part…oops?
The recipe was originally called Pumpkin Cake Bars, which led me to believe the cake would come out firm and, oh I don’t know, bar like? Oh how wrong I was. The cake came out super moist and very cake like, not at all like a bar. Which kinda messed with my plan for the final product.
See, I had intended to bake the bars and use them for two separate events, oh, did I mention this all happened two weekends ago, for Thanksgiving? Yet one more example of how I don’t rock at this whole food blogging thing…but let’s ignore that shall we? 😉
I was going to a small get together on the Sunday and then a Thanksgiving dinner on the Monday. The plan was to make these bars and take half to each event. Since they were supposed to be bars it made sense they would be plated as an already cut item, like if I’d taken Nanaimo Bars. You wouldn’t bring Nanaimo Bars to a party and not already have them cut and plated right? I’m going to pretend you’re nodding your head in agreement right now and not googling “Nanaimo Bar”. So if these bars were cut and plated when I took them to each event it wouldn’t be obvious that I didn’t bring the entire quantity. Not like I cut a cake in half and you can see the inside of the cake along the cut edge!
Except that these bars came out as cake, not bars, which meant the cut that exposed the inside of the cake was super obvious…
For the Sunday event I tried cutting half the cake as bars but it didn’t work very well. It just looked like I was bringing cut pieces of cake, which I was if we want to get technical about it. Also, the top of the cake was tacky to the touch, which I also wasn’t expecting. Seriously, it is a very moist cake! This wouldn’t have been a problem if I’d had time to do a crumb coat with the frosting but I didn’t, so I ended up with crumbs in the frosting. A personal pet peeve of mine.
Now, to be fair, I seem to be the only one with an issue with this cake. The people at both events really liked it and didn’t seem to care at all about the crumbs in the frosting or that it was supposed to be a bar recipe and it came out a proper cake instead. So perhaps I am too focused on the look of the food when other people are more concerned about the taste?
The Ingredients:
4 large eggs
1 2/3 C white sugar
1 C vegetable oil
1 (15oz) can pumpkin puree
2 C all-purpose flour
2 tsp baking powder
1 tsp salt
1 tsp baking soda
2 tsp cinnamon
6 ounces cream cheese
6 Tbl butter, softened
3 C confectioners sugar
The Instructions:
Pre-heat oven to 350F
Grease and flour a 9×13 pan
In a large mixing bowl beat together the eggs, sugar, oil, and pumpkin.
In a different bowl sift together the flour, baking powder, salt, baking soda, and cinnamon. Mix well.
Add the dry ingredients to the wet, mix thoroughly.
Pour in to the prepared pan.
Bake at 350F for 25-30 minutes, allow to cool completely.
For the Frosting:
Beat cream cheese, softened butter, and confectioners sugar together. Evenly spread over the bars after they are cooled.
Ok, so that is the original recipe, here is how I changed it!
I added 1/2 tsp nutmeg and a 1/2 tsp cloves to the dry ingredients at the same time I added the cinnamon. Next time I would bump up the quantity of all three seasonings as I found the flavour to be quite subtle, but that could just be me because everyone else seemed to love it as-is.
The frosting makes a huge amount, way more than you need. I would say you could easily make half the quantity and still have plenty to frost the cake, because this really is a cake.
Oh, and I never “grease and flour” a pan, I just spray with baking spray, or sometimes I soften some butter and spread that on the pan, but I don’t do the flour bit. The cake came out of the pan no problem, so I say grease the pan in whatever way your normal style is, it should be fine.
And here, the one, lone, sad, picture of a piece of the cake…go ahead, laugh, I deserve it…*big epic sigh*
crumbs in the frosting, I don’t even want to look at it 🤦♀️
The Amazing Shrinking Woman 
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