what's cooking wednesday - pumpkin cake

I am not a fan of pumpkin pie because I don't care for the texture of it. Pumpkin cake, however is a whole other animal. Truthfully, though it's really all those yummy holiday time spices I truly enjoy like cinnamon. Even still I thought it would be a great idea to give this recipe a try.



Pumpkin Cake with cinnamon cream cheese frosting

1 15 oz can of pumpkin puree
1 tsp ground cinnamon
1 tsp ground cloves
1 tsp ground nutmeg
1 package yellow cake mix
1/4 cup vegetable oil
2 eggs
1 tsp vanilla

Preheat oven to 350 degrees. Grease and flour a 9 x 13 pan. Whisk together the pumpkin, cinnamon, cloves and nutmeg. In a large bowl mix together cake mix and oil. Beat in eggs. Fold in the pumpkin mixture and stir in the vanilla.

Pour batter into prepared pan. Bake in a preheated oven for 40 minutes or until a toothpick inserted in the centre comes out clean.

Cinnamon Cream Cheese frosting

1/2 cup butter
12 oz cream cheese
1 tsp ground cinnamon
1 tsp vanilla

Cream together butter and cream cheese until light and fluffy. Beat in icing sugar, cinnamon and vanilla until smooth. Spread onto cooled cake.

Recipe Notes: This was fantastic. Although I didn't have a yellow cake mix. Which is odd for me. I usually have a stash of cake mixes in the cupboard. I still do, just no yellow. So I used a spice cake mix instead. The pumpkin wasn't over powering at all, but I think next time I'll just make a regular spice cake. The frosting is what really made this. I can only remember one other time I attempted my own frosting. It was for Papa and Grandma Linda's 10th anniversary and it did not go well. In fact we ended up abandoning the entire project and my cake decorating cousin ended up making one at work for the party. So slightly disastrous would be a good description of my frosting making history. This was the exact opposite of that. Just easy to make heaven in a mixing bowl. Yum. Highly recommend!




What is What's Cooking Wednesday and how can I play?

What's cooking Wednesday was born out of a desire to get out of that what's for dinner rut. Playing is easy, on Wednesday post a recipe that has been tried and tested by you and then pop over here and add your name to the Mr. Linky. When entering your name also add the name of the recipe in brackets and make sure you link to your What's Cooking Wednesday post and not just your blog's front page. And don't forget to link back here, the home of What's Cooking Wednesday.

So for example I would write Shan (Speedy Chicken Stir Fry) in the name section. For the URL section I would post this: http://shanrev.blogspot.com/2007/10/whats-cooking-wednesday-speedy-chicken.html

I'll let you in on a little secret. Much to Kaffy's chagrin, my WCW recipes are almost never made on a Wednesday. So feel free to cook and photograph whenever you have time and join us posting on Wednesday.